


Sic semper tyrannis

by PencilofAwesomeness



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Aftermath of Torture, Altean Empire, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Brotherly Bonding, Dehumanization, Family Dynamics, Fantastic Racism, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, I REGRET NOTHING, Imprisonment, Keith is 1000 percent done with life, Mild Language, Minor Character Death, Moral Ambiguity, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sentient Voltron Lions, So is Shiro, The Galra are actually just a giant family/pack, Violence, Voltron is still here, War, actually everyone is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2018-12-13 22:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11769486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PencilofAwesomeness/pseuds/PencilofAwesomeness
Summary: "Close it. Close the breach." Zarkon locked his jaw, the order firm. Honerva looked distinctly displeased, but didn't say anything.Alfor crossed his arms in protest. "But there's so much more we don't know about it."The breach was sealed anyways.---Things turned out differently between the Paladins of Old. But ten thousand years later, the universe is still plunged in turmoil and suppression—just not at the Galra's hands. Though some things aren't different at all: Voltron is still the universe's only hope. However, that's a little harder to accomplish when the Paladins of Voltron lay divided on different ends of a war.AU where Zarkon doesn't turn evil due to quintessence poisoning, and history turns out a little bit different.





	1. A New Era

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I would like to say, I was _robbed_. Episode four of season 3 completely stole my thunder. I totally came up with this idea way before Season 3 even came out! Granted, this is still different. In the alternate reality in canon, Zarkon had still been evil, except 'Empress Allura' defeated him. Here... Well, Zarkon never took Honerva into the breach and got roofied by Dark Quintessence™, so he never became a power-hungry immortal-zombie-thing. 
> 
> I don't know how often this will get updated, but I will try to keep up with this. 
> 
> Enjoy!

_"The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage—who can tell?—but truth—truth stripped of its cloak of time."_

\- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

* * *

 

The two figures darted through the shadows, moving swiftly and silently. They were careful to avoid the eerie blue lights that illuminated the corners as they trekked through the corridors. Occasionally, a white clad armored figure would march down the halls, but they never spotted the strangers in their complacency.

They reached a small guarded room at the end; the two guards stationed there were no match for the intruders, and fell with silent cries. Both of the figures were dressed in dark body suits with a luminescent purple detailing. Cowls with three eyes covered their heads, making them indistinguishable, save that one was a head taller than the other.

“You sure this is the place?” the smaller one whispered.

The other nodded. “Yeah. It’s in there all right.” A soft whir cut through the air as a purple hand sliced the metal door as if it was nothing.

The smaller one grabbed the device on the other side with a grin, and the two turned to run…

…only to come face to face with a more formidable foe.

He was tall, but not abnormally so. Rather lanky, actually. He held himself in a deceptively relaxed position, but neither intruder missed the way he held the blue blaster like it was a part of him. He wore white armor like the other guards, but his was marked with rich blue plating.

“You’re a little far from home, dudes,” the Blue Paladin taunted, taking careful aim at the intruders dressed in Galra garb.

Behind the mask, the small one narrowed his eyes. “I can say the same for you, human.” The device was still in his grip, feeling oddly form fitting and natural in his hand, like it belonged there.

The Blue Paladin scowled. “Hate to break it to you, sunshine, but if you’re going to try to disrupt the galaxy, more people are going to get involved; you’re stuck with me.” Damn, if he didn’t sound smug about it.

“You’re one to speak, _traitor_ ,” the small figure hissed. He looked like he wanted to lunge, but the larger one held him back.

“We need to get out of here,” he hissed, ever the sensible one.

He was right, of course—that didn’t mean he had to like it. With a sudden burst of movement, the two Galra infiltrators charged past the paladin, who responded by immediately opening fire.

The two ducked and swerved, unnervingly close to getting hit. A blast charred the taller one’s shoulder, but he kept going.

“Quiznak!” the paladin cursed, turning to run after the intruders. He lunged at the small one, sending the two rolling. The intruder twisted around to kick the paladin off, but the paladin foresaw the move and pinned his knee to the intruder’s chest, causing him to grunt in surprise.

The two grappled, surprisingly evenly matched, until a metallic _sching_ cut through the air. The device in the thief’s hand morphed into the red and white sword, which then came hurtling towards the paladin’s shoulder. With a cry, the paladin had to lurch backwards to avoid the blow, which clipped his armor anyways. But that was all the intruder needed to wiggle away and flee.

Cursing, the Blue Paladin scrambled back to his feet and rushed after them, but the Galra were no longer anywhere in sight.

Lance panted, staring blankly in the distance. The rebels were long gone by now, and there was little he could do about it. He grimaced. How was he supposed to tell the princess that one of the precious paladin bayards had been stolen by rebels?

But there was another thing was the bothering him. The bayards were special, so he was told; only for paladins, and only for the paladin of the corresponding lion.

So how in the galaxy did a Galra thief activate it?

—o0o—

When they got back to the Red Lion, Keith released the breath he didn’t know he was holding, ripping the three-eyed cowl off of his head to reveal dark shaggy hair and furry purple ears. “Shit, the paladin really _is_ a human,” the hybrid breathed.

His companion removed his cowl, revealing a scarred nose and concerned gray eyes. “He could’ve been Altean—hard to tell otherwise with the helmet,” Shiro said carefully. In reality, both of them were afraid of the truth.

Keith shook his head sadly. “No, he smelled human,” he countered sourly. “And he didn’t deny it.”

Shiro grimaced. “The Alteans must’ve found Earth then.” Keith couldn’t help but notice the pained look in the older man’s eyes. It hurt both of them, to think that Earth fell victim to the greedy Alteans. While Keith was not entirely human himself, he grew up on Earth with the help of a holographic body mask; it was home to him. And he hated to think that his home had been swept up in the Altean’s conquest of the universe. All of humanity’s lack of awareness of aliens aside, Earth was full of stubborn people that wouldn’t take kindly to being told what to do. And Keith was well aware of what Alfor did to colonies that didn’t cooperate.

“At least, if he’s a Paladin, then it can’t be that bad,” Keith tried, thinking aloud. Shiro appeared thoughtful at this prospect, leaning back against the cabin’s side, relaxing marginally.

The Lions of Voltron were precious to the Alteans, and the ones they had managed to keep were guarded carefully. But ultimately, the Alteans couldn’t control them. In order to truly become a paladin, the Blue Lion would have had to have chosen the human—a fact that Keith was very sure outraged the Alteans, and wounded their pride, something that Keith had too much pleasure in imagining. Maybe there _was_ hope for the other lions yet.

The Red Lion purred beneath Keith encouragingly, obviously pleased at the thought that her sisters could be saved and redeemed.

“We should check in,” Shiro brought up after a moment of pregnant silence. “Let them know we made it out okay.” Keith couldn’t help but to roll his eyes at the thought, mostly because of the overprotective insistence that they check in often when they first left for this mission. Even when he had been chosen as the Red Lion’s new paladin, the officers’ irritating need to treat them—the ‘humans’—with kid-gloves was grating.

Still, Keith tapped the controls obediently, a screen popping up over the dash. “We didn’t die,” Keith announced sarcastically. “Not like we would have.”

Thace did not appeared amused. “No complications?” he pressed. Worry wart, that one was. The head officer of reconnaissance for the Galra Retaliation Core (AKA, the ones who stuck out their neck on behalf of the shrinking species) was painfully adamant on triple-checking all loose ends, not to mention treating every matter in the most pessimistic way possible. Although, Keith thinks it might be a thousand times worse because he’s his uncle.

“Actually.” Shiro cleared his throat. Damn Shiro, ever the honest and forthcoming one (mostly). Keith winced, knowing what came next. “We encountered the Blue Paladin.”

Thace immediately grew rigid. “Are you hurt? Were there any other guards, or paladins? Any sign that we have been compromised?” The Galran moved as if to look over the boys carefully, like he could inspect them through the screen.

Keith rolled his eyes at the usual display of _worry_. “We’ll report when we get back,” he dismissed. “Let me focus on flying.” And coming up with a way to make this shit-fest sound like a controlled situation. Because heaven forbid that the Galra ever encounter an (extremely common) circumstance with volatile variables.

The Galra’s lips pressed together in displeasure; everyone present knew full well that a conversation wouldn’t distract Keith from flying a sentient lion, but luckily for them, Thace accepted. “Fine, meet with us as soon as you get back.”

Keith gave a sardonic salute. “Aye, aye, cap’n.” As the screen shut off, Keith heard Thace mutter something about weird Earth sayings, and smiled victoriously. Serves him right for doubting their ability. Because as Keith saw it, they still _succeeded._ After a painstaking series of completely random and pointless thefts, all to make the disappearance of the bayard relatively innocuous, he and Shiro made it out with the weapon and without being followed. Or shot. Yay.

“So, do you have a way of making this whole…situation…sound _good_ , because if you do, I’m all ears. We only have a varga or so before we make it back.”

Shiro pressed his lips together in a tight frown. “I have no idea. But we have to tell them everything—Zarkon needs to know.”

Keith’s ears tilted backwards at that. Zarkon…he was going to be upset. And that was something nobody really wanted to see. “Yeah, I know.”

Human. Hmph. It was surreal. Keith leaned back in the pilot’s chair, images of Earth—his _home_ —flitting through his mind. Imagining it burning, the Altean crest looming in the air. Paladins or no, the Alteans probably knew _where_ Earth was now. And that—that scared Keith more than anything.

—o0o—

“He called me a traitor! _Traitor!_ ” Lance huffed. “He doesn’t even know me!”

Pidge deadpanned at the dramatic teen. “You’re just upset that the rebels got away.”

“Well, _yeah_ , but that’s not the point!”

Hunk frowned in sympathy. “Don’t worry about it, man; he was probably just trying to rile you up.”

“Yeah, probably.” Lance sighed, letting his gaze drift to the high ceiling. The three paladins were all hanging out in one of the empty break rooms at the far end of the Castle of Lions, strewn about the organically shaped couches whilst going about their own business. While the Alteans were generally welcoming, there was still an awkward divide between human and Altean, leaving the very human paladins to keep to themselves in their downtime, to avoid any uncomfortable situation. The guards and staff that filled the Castle normally didn’t come down here, finding little use for the older, smaller version of the break room. So, the paladins monopolized its use in its vacancy, either choosing to set up their doings there or in their lions’ hangars.

Currently, Pidge was perched on the armrest with her laptop in her, well, lap, while Hunk absently studied Altean. Lance was simply sprawled across the couch staring upwards as he reflected on past events. Allura was disappointed, and it wasn’t easy disappointing the princess. However, he took some grace in the fact that she knew he wasn’t expecting them, and that the facility’s security was less than desired.

What he didn’t tell her, however, was that the intruder activated the bayard. It nagged at his brain relentlessly, pestering him, trying to tell him something… but what? Maybe he was mistaken about the nature of the bayards—maybe it was different if the Lion it belonged to was paladin-less. Maybe he should tell Allura, if only so he wouldn’t be confused anymore. (And nothing stopped the nagging: that little voice that Lance normally trusted that told him when something was up.)

“There’s another thing,” Lance spoke. If anyone could help him reach a decision, it was his team. His friends. “The Galran activated the bayard when they stole it.”

“What?” Pidge sputtered, turning her attention towards him with sharp eyes.

Hunk shut his book and set it aside, his brows furrowed. “Aren’t those things only supposed to respond to a paladin?”

Lance shrugged. “That’s what I thought. But it suddenly turned into a sword in the dude’s hand while we were fighting—that’s only the reason they got away from me, to be honest.” At least, Lance liked to think it was the only reason.

Pidge adjusted her glasses thoughtfully. “That’s strange. Allura definitely made it seem like they were unique to each colored paladin… Let me see something: Lance, give me your bayard.” She reached her hand out expectedly.

He handed it over nonchalantly. Pidge examined it carefully, before slipping her hand into the regular position. All three humans stared at it, even as Pidge turned it to and fro and squeezed, but nothing happened. She handed it back with a sigh, and Lance replaced it on his hip.

“Well that didn’t work,” Pidge muttered sourly, “But that doesn’t mean much. It could be since you already imprinted on it.”

Hunk tapped his chin. “How does the bayard even know it’s imprinted to a paladin? And what happens when a new paladin is chosen?”

Something like determination and interest sparked in Pidge’s eyes. “Hmmm… that is a good point. That would mean that the bayard _had_ to be connected to the lions, which would insinuate that only its paladin can use it, but that doesn’t explain the Galran.” Suddenly, Pidge swung off the couch, collecting her laptop. “I want to run some tests. Cover for me!”

Lance and Hunk watched as the younger girl sped from the room without explanation. “Thanks for sharing!” Lance called out after her, well aware she was outside hearing range.

“Cover for her?” Hunk repeated. “Why would she need us to cover for her on the Castle?”

“Not sure, unless she suspects something—oh, well, we gotta’ do it anyway; it’s part of the Code.”

“Code?” Hunk repeated. “What ‘Code’?” But Lance was already jogging away, ready to distract any wandering sentry to the point of irritation. While he wasn’t sure if Pidge was hiding her tests for pride, or because she suspected the Alteans of something, he would do what any good ‘brother’ would do—abet her regardless, and possibly use his assistance as leverage later.

Lance, personally, didn’t have anything against the Alteans. They were good people, just trying to better the universe. That didn’t change the fact that Lance was well aware that not all of them were that peachy keen on he and the other two being there. And yeah, it made sense. If _he_ was a part of some fantastic and advanced race of people, and suddenly, three aliens from a backwater planet become soul-bound or whatever to their most precious creations… Yeah, he’d be salty too. That being said, Lance was no stranger to avoiding them when necessary—or, more often, deflecting them, as he was currently doing. Because if Lance had any awkwardness around the Alteans, it was much, much worse with Pidge. And he respected that, really—it was so hard for Pidge to trust people that it took _months_ and finally these few weeks in space for her to tell them that she was, well, a _girl._

He still felt blind-sided by that one, really.

One of the hands of the ship—a routine maintenance worker—neared the Green Lion’s hangar, her nose in a holo-pad. Lance smoothly intercepted her path. “Heeey.” What was her name again? Gira? Gaira? It would something like that. Lance was good at names, but there were a _lot_ of faces to keep up with. “What’s someone as gorgeous as you doing, heading off in such a hurry? You look tired.” It was true, but it was mostly to keep her off of Pidge’s back while she did her Science with a capital ‘S’.

The Altean woman scowled slightly. “I am fine, paladin,” she insisted, rather badly. “I assure you, I am capable of my job.” She made a step to continue forward.

Whoops, that wasn’t what he meant. He still couldn’t remember her precise name, so he improvised. “Of _course_ you are, ‘G’!” Lance corrected. One should never insinuate an Altean was incapable of doing what they were supposed to. “But it would be a shame to wrinkle such a lovely face. Please,” he bowed deeply, his arms directing them towards the common rooms, “allow me to share _respiere_ with you.” _Respiere_ was the Altean equivalent of tea-time. The schedule-driven race didn’t do anything without reason, so _respiere_ was one of the few things they did that didn’t serve explicit purpose, other than to rejuvenate the body. And it was rarely taken alone.

She seemed to cave at this, her peach skin blushing up to her ears and swallowing her silvery markings. “I would be honored, Blue Paladin.” Yes! He grinned as he looped his arm around her elbow and led them away. Not only did he totally save Pidge’s secretive rear, but he scored himself a little date. Man, did he have _game,_ or what?

The Alteans might have sticks up their collective butt sometimes, but they weren’t bad. They just wanted to make the universe a safer place; and there was nothing better than Voltron to do it. Lance knows that Voltron is not complete, and that this worries the Alteans to the point of minor assholery, but that’s okay. He’ll do his part. Because that’s why the Blue Lion chose him, right? To help.

Getting dragged out to space to do that, getting stuck amidst a bunch of aliens, might not have been Lance’s optimum choice, but he’ll make the most of it.


	2. The War Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Galra do not panic; they _prepare_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who left comments on the last chapter: _thank you so much!_ It really lit a fire underneath me; I'm not used to my fics getting love. : )
> 
>  
> 
> **Note:**
> 
>  
> 
> I'm not sure how the Galra race works, per say, but I've divided them into two sub-species: the drules and the vells. (Otherwise known as the non-furry and the furry.) It makes sense that a species would have different races, right? We humans do. (Hispanic, white, black, Asian, etc) And since we range anywhere from Zarkon (no hair) to Sendak (fuzzy fruit bat) I needed an explanation.
> 
> Also, there are no OCs in this chapter. (The OC tag is mostly for filler aliens and Alteans, since we don't really have any canon Alteans to work with...) I do, however, use two characters from the show in the 2000s, Voltron Force. Just so you know. They're not really major though...

_"Wait, it's just about to break, its more than I can take,_  
_Everything's about to change,_  
_I feel it in my veins, its not going away,_  
_Everything's about to change."_

\- Thousand Foot Crutch, "War of Change"

* * *

 

It had been about twenty-seven spicolian movements since Shiro had escaped the Alteans. If he had to guess, it’s been nearly a feeb and a half since he had been _captured_ in the first place. But Shiro didn’t think too hard about it—about time. Because that would mean that the milestones of his life were being defined by _them._

Shiro walked through the purple-lit halls undeterred, the ‘alien’ lighting strikingly normal and soothing compared to the harsh blue lights in his memories. One hundred ticks until their destination. Shiro’s mental timer was nearly immaculate, as it ever was. It kept him focused, alert, aware.

He steeled himself, squeezing Keith’s shoulder for mutual support. Ninety ticks until they had to inform the GRC officers that their fears had just manifested.

This was going to be a fun meeting.

They passed by some scouts, and Shiro dipped his head in greeting as they did likewise. He may be the odd one out among the Galra—the only full-blooded outsider, a human—but he had earned his spot at the Table. And stand-offish and tense though they were, the Galra were not bad people. Once they accepted someone into their ranks, they didn’t abandon them. And as crazy and unfair as this situation was, Shiro found comfort in this.

They turned the corner. Fifteen more ticks.

Finally, they approached the door to the Table, and it slid open at the faintest touch. He and Keith were the last ones to arrive, as expected, so they were immediately greeted with the yellow gazes of the officers. Everyone was present—except Lotor, of course, but that was a given at this point. They stood at the front, Shiro folding his arms behind him comfortably, instead of taking their respective seats—it was easier this way. Thace immediately stood as well, brows creased and ears terse. “Shiro, Keith,” he greeted quickly. “Report.”

First, Keith held up the bayard. “Mission was a success,” he intoned, though still managing to sound distinctly proud. “We infiltrated the storage hold with minimal effort, and remained undetected until retrieval.” The significant ‘ _but’_ was not lost on the Table. “We were encountered by the Blue Paladin.”

Judging by the array of gasps and questions, Shiro had to guess that Thace had waited for them to bring the news themselves.

“This is madness!” Sendak, the second-in-command, jumped up with an angered fist on the table, his ear’s pressed downwards. “We should have destroyed the Blue Lion when we had the chance!”

“There was no way to destroy such a beautiful machine, and you know this,” the Head Engineer sniffed, pointed teeth set in a smug sneer. Maahox still creeped Shiro out, if he was being honest. Despite the Galra-Calusian hybrid being half the size or below anyone else in the room, he was just…off-putting. Intelligent beyond belief—Shiro wouldn’t have two arms, if it weren’t for him—but his disposition was far too eager and intense for anyone who was sane.

“If it can be built, it can be _torn down,_ ” Sendak growled.

“Enough.” The room stills instantly; the quiet voice of Zarkon can freeze armies in motion, if he really wanted to. Zarkon is old, and haggard, and he doesn’t stand. He doesn’t need to. He sat at the head of the table, hands folded in front of him, as his yellow eyes burn. Shiro had never witnessed Zarkon in his prime before—no one here has, except for maybe Lotor, if he remembers—but he can’t help but to think how terrible and awe-inspiring that would have been. Shiro had heard stories—more like legends—of the great Galra Chief, the Black Paladin of Old. No one save for the Altean Emperor had seen as much as he had, and though rendered without pupil by the accident that left him immortal, the haunts of history could be seen in his gaze, deep and disconcerting. Shiro couldn’t help but to admire Chief Zarkon. And it was that power that led so many to still follow him without question, even though the Galran could hardly land a blow in his current state. Machines and braces held him together at the seams in attempts to preserve Zarkon’s ability to move, much less fight. Time had not been kind; it had taken his body, but nothing could take his mind.

He continued, pleased now that the Table was silent enough for a pin to drop. “We are not destroying the Blue Lion. Even then, that is in the past; there is no use worrying ourselves over it. What is important is the future.” The High Chief paused, jaw set straight. “I have felt the lions awaken, through the Black Lion. All the Lions of Voltron have returned.”

Even Thace and Kolivan jerked at this, and they were hardly surprised by _anything._ “All of them have paladins, my Lord?” Sendak sputtered. Shiro felt himself just as surprised. There had been rumors, yes, but there have been rumors for a long time. Altea had wanted it to appear that the lions were still theirs, after all.

The Lions of Voltron were supposed to be sacred, and Zarkon had assured them that they would remain dormant until the right time—that they wouldn’t give into the darkness and subjugation of the Altean Empire. With Zarkon himself the only remaining Paladin for as long as Voltron had been around, it was easy to believe him.

There had been no other paladin until Keith. Shiro only barely remembers the day it happened, but he remembered enough. Keith had found him, and Keith brought him home—well, close enough, anyways. And the Red Lion, stored safely away from the Alteans by Zarkon himself, had _roared,_ eyes aglow for the first time in millennia.

But enough about that.

Zarkon didn’t address Sendak’s question, not directly, and still set his stare ahead at some unknown thing. “We must liberate the lions—at any cost necessary.”

Murmuring broke out at the Table, but Shiro didn’t pay much attention to it. Liberating the lions…if what Shiro knew about the Lions of Voltron was true, then that wasn’t necessarily as easy as stealing the lions away—that might mean killing the paladins, and subsequently, their bond.

Shiro had no love for the Alteans. They had picked up his team on the Kerberos mission, questioned them without hesitation or regard for autonomy, and split them up. To this day, Shiro doesn’t know the fate of Commander Holt or Matt. Hopefully, it was better than his. The Alteans had never seen a human before, and they were lovers of their own twisted science; Shiro made a fine specimen. He shuddered slightly as the memory drudged up phantom sensations of metal bands and needles and pervasive quintessence and their _stares and murmurs and how fast does he heal…?_ No. _No_ , no more of that.

He had no qualms about watching Altea and all the lies they stood for burned to the ground; neither did he mind the same fate to those spineless fools who sympathized with them and fought without threat for their cause.

But the Blue Paladin was a _human._ And somehow, that made all the difference.

Shiro cleared his throat. Kolivan, ever the attentive one, noticed amidst the officers’ bickering. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

“The Blue Paladin—he was a human. A fairly young one, at that.”

Kala’s brow snaked upwards, her burgundy hands folded in front on her. She was the head tactician— _the_ tactician, some would say—of the Galra, despite having outside blood in her. She was always impossibly erect and blunt, with little room for emotion. Or outward shows of it, at least. She and Kolivan were actually mates, but no one would never be ever to tell. Shiro was always under the impression, though, that she didn’t like him—though she may not like anybody—because Kolivan liked him, or at least he did well enough to train him and make him Lieutenant of the Blade. “Human? I was under the impression no one strayed far from that backwater planet of yours.”

Shiro tried not to take the remark personally, because it was true. Keith beat him to a response, however. “ _Yes,_ he was human. I was close enough to smell him.” Keith didn’t spare as much bite as Shiro would have, but he didn’t mind. Luckily, no one pressed him on his tone.

Instead, Zarkon appeared grave. “It seemed the Altean Empire has expanded more than we were aware of…” Everybody looked down at this, somber. Shiro felt his fist clench—though he felt little in his metal hand—at the prospect. “Regardless,” Zarkon continued heavily. “We have a duty to what remains of universe—to Voltron itself—to keep Voltron from Altean hands. We will draw out these paladins, and we will reclaim Voltron. Until then, we must assess the situation.” Zarkon stood, a sign that the meeting was over. Everyone knew their parts, and there was work to be done.

Zarkon left without another word, Sendak following close behind, even though it was clear that the Commander was less than pleased about the plan. The Galra—already stripped of their home, Daibazaal, and the majority of their kind—had survived by protecting their own, and keeping two steps ahead of the Alteans who hunted them out of spite. Yes, in doing so, they had dealt blows to Alfor’s empire, but this… This was an upfront, offensive attack they were talking about. Shiro could understand why no one was happy about it.

“We need to gather the Blade, and form a plan of attack,” Kolivan declared, striding up to Shiro as the Table began to file out of the room. Shiro nodded. They sure did need one hell of a plan, if they were going to take on three lions of Voltron. He had seen what the Red Lion was capable of; he had to assume that the others were just as strong.

Speaking of which… Shiro looked over his shoulder, and met Keith’s purple eyes. The Red Paladin dipped his chin in acknowledgement. He didn’t want to leave Keith right now, not after what they had just discovered, but there were things that needed to be done.

He stifled a sigh. Shiro still wasn’t sure just what Kolivan saw in him. He had joined the Blade of Marmora task-force to give himself something productive to do, as well as to give back to the Galra after they took in an outsider and made him whole again—as best they could, anyways. Of course, Shiro was sure it was at Keith’s behest. He still hates to think about Keith, left alone on Earth after Shiro disappeared from the Kerberos mission, after he promised that he wouldn’t leave him. Somehow, Keith had found the people he had been estranged from at birth, just to try to find Shiro. His dedication and sheer stubbornness never ceases to amaze him. Still, Shiro is grateful that Thace had found him on that planet, after he had escaped the druids and was running from the Alteans, who found it in their best interest no one survived to tell the tale of their false face; and he was grateful that they gave him a place to stay, and a new arm…

Shiro hadn’t been part of the Blade for long, it seemed, when Antok—the current Lieutenant—had been killed. And for some reason, Kolivan chose _Shiro_ as his replacement, not someone who deserved it like Ulaz or Throk. Shiro didn’t know what Kolivan saw in him. The Galra, mixed as though some of them were, usually didn’t take well to outsiders.

They walked down the moon-base’s halls to the Training Area, where off-duty Blades often gathered. Just to the side, was the war room, so to speak. Shiro followed Kolivan inside, and activated the map, already sensing that Kolivan was about to. “We cannot reveal that we are after the lions,” Kolivan rumbled, brows drawn. Kolivan was more drule than vell, meaning that he lacked canine-like ears; it was a shame, because it was always easier to tell a Galra’s emotions and thoughts by the ears, like with Keith—and Kolivan was good at keeping his thoughts to himself. “We must attack someplace beneficial to us, so that the Alteans do not grow overly suspicious.”

“What about one of their bases?” Shiro suggested, drawing his fingers across some of the noticeable additions to the Empire, where Altea had established bases and embassies where they might lord over their assimilated peoples.

Kolivan’s lip twitched, and spun the holo-map outward. “Not too ambitious—we must be able to take them.”

The Galra were nothing if not cautious. “You’re right,” Shiro conceded. “An outpost then—someplace with importance. Like Yurlo—it was conquered recently according to Thace; they wouldn’t be as fortified there, but it would still hurt to lose.”

“A possibility,” Kolivan admitted. “But not so much beneficial.” Shiro thought that freeing Yurlo of the Alteans was ‘beneficial’ enough, but not to the Galra’s standards. It was true, he supposed—the Alteans might suspect a random jailbreak.

Shiro spun the map some more. Seriously, why did Kolivan even want him? It wasn’t often that he listened to Shiro anyways. Wait—something caught Shiro’s attention, and he felt his own lip curl upwards. Sendak _had_ complained that they were lacking when it came to firepower. “How about an Altean weapons’ storehouse?”

Kolivan paused, and wordlessly observed the highlighted location. There was merit to the idea. Shiro imagined that the Alteans wouldn’t take kindly to losing a source of weaponry, and the Galra could always use more weapons. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book—at least on Earth. “I’ll discuss this with Kala and Sendak,” he stated, turning to leave. “Go summon the Blades on base and any in nearby sectors.” With that, Kolivan left.

Shiro felt himself smile in victory. That was as good as an admission of ‘good idea’ that he was ever going to get—and he’ll take it.

As he went to recall any Blades out on recon, the significance of the upcoming battle really hit him. They were going to fight the forces of Altea. They have, before, but Shiro had never been so directly involved. Hell, the Galra rarely confronted them _directly_ at all! It was suicide.

A part of him was glad, in a twisted way, to fight them. Shiro wanted to vindicate what they had done to him, and what they had done to his crewmates. The other part was nervous. There were so many ways this could go wrong. And then there was Keith. He was the Red Paladin, and if things got hairy, he would have to go out there. Zarkon had wished to keep the Red Lion’s activation a secret from the universe, and Shiro had been glad—that meant that Alfor didn’t have his eyes set on Keith. But all of that might change after this…

But he couldn’t dwell on that. If anybody was going to survive this, there was work to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter should be up....soonerish. I guess. I dunno. 
> 
> If you guys have any thoughts or questions or requests, post 'em below!


	3. Opposed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just when Pidge starts to really figure out this whole paladin thing, more secrets and inconsistencies get thrown her way. She misses the days when a simple five-minute hack finishes the job.

_"The moral sense, we are learning, is as vulnerable to illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity. ... And it has the nasty habit of always putting the self on the side of the angels."_

\- Steven Pinker, "The Moral Instinct"

* * *

 

_September 24 th, 2090 – Thirty-six quintants ago_

Pidge sat cross-legged on her bed, computer nestled comfortably—more or less—in her lap. This was going no-where. Starting four nights ago, Pidge had finally found something, something that appeared suspiciously like chatter. _Alien_ chatter.

And she had no idea what any of it meant.

It was frustrating, to say the least. For the first time in a long time, Katie Holt had found a clue, and it was in a completely different language. There was one word that was repeated enough to be important, however: _Voltron._ Whatever that meant.

She wondered if the Garrison knew—she had picked up the chatter by boosting _their_ signals, after all. But Pidge doubted that even if they did, they wouldn’t be eager to share.

“Heeey, Pidge!” Lance McClain, the insufferable cadet she would be paired with until she could rid herself of this place, strolled into the dorm with his usual fanfare. “It’s such a beautiful night out, and you ‘n’ Hunk are being total _bums._ I found him studying! _Studying!_ On a _Saturday!”_ Lance tutted dramatically. Hunk, who she just noticed had shuffled in behind him, looked sulky. Oh well. Not her problem.

Lance stood on his toes, trying to see what she had sequestered on the top bunk; she snatched any offending object away from the snoop. “Don’t tell me _you’re_ studying, too,” he whined. Pidge merely grunted. Let the idiot think whatever he wanted to think; she was _busy._

“That’s it, I’m taking you two outside,” Lance decided. Pidge ignored him—or at least, she tried _very hard_ to.

“Uh, we’re not allow to go outside this late…” Hunk blathered nervously, shoulders hunched.

Lance waved him off. “P _ffft_ , rules like those are just _suggestions._ C’mon guys! Where’s your sense of _adventure?_ ”

“I’m busy,” Pidge growled, aloud this time for that dunder-head to hear, since he obviously couldn’t take a hint.

The tall Latino only looked impossibly smug, his eyebrow waggling. “Don’t tell me you’re _scared?_ ”

 

Sneaking out of the Garrison was hopelessly easy. Pidge herself had snuck _in_ several times, and _that,_ she was proud to say, was _way_ harder. Lance pulled out one of the hover-crafts—just large enough for the three of them, though barely—and revved up the engine like it some sort of hot-rod. Pidge shouldered her bag—she would _never_ leave her stuff unsupervised where someone might find it—and wondered why she got talked into this. Right. Because Lance wouldn’t leave her alone and threatened to sing every ancient Katy Perry song he knew.

Their little joyride through the desert was as pointless as she thought it would be, but at least over the wind howling in her ears, she couldn’t hear Lance run his mouth. But suddenly, the hover-craft jolted to a stop, and Pidge nearly tumbled from the seat. “Lance, what the hell?!”

Lance was unusually silent, head up and alert as his eyes scanned an empty horizon. “Did you guys hear that?”

“Hear what? I didn’t hear anything.” Hunk gasped. “Are there coyotes? Rattlesnakes? Oh God we’re going to die!”

Pidge strained her ears, but didn’t hear anything. Lance must have finally lost his mind. He kicked the engine back into the gear and shot forward—straight towards the cliff-face. “Lance you idiot _what are you doing?!_ ” she managed to scream.

“It’s coming from over here! I can feel it!” he shouted back.

This was how she was going to die. She was going to die because Lance was an idiot, and she was never going to find her father or her brother, and she was never going to figure out those transmissions, and—

Lance slid the hover-craft to a stop, and Hunk practically falls off the side, already throwing up onto the desert ground. There’s an opening, small and hardly noticeable, in the side of the canyon; Lance strolled in without a moment’s hesitation. “It’s like…It’s like something’s calling me…” he whispered.

There’s something on the walls. Pidge peered at it, trying to make out the markings in the dark. Hmm. This actually is kind of interesting. Maybe these are historical drawings, or—

Lance touched one, and the entire cave lit up in brilliant blue, the drawings _glowing._ It’s impossible, but it’s _happening._ The drawings depict lions, boxy and simple, and remarkably similar. Pidge can feel it. This— _this—_ is the kind of stuff secrets are made out of. There’s something powerful—something unknown—here, and she’s going to figure it out. Maybe it’s not even human!

The ground gives out from under them.

There’s screaming—totally _not_ Pidge’s own—and a burst of water. Pidge lands on something soft, surprisingly, and there’s an _oof._ “Oh, uh, sorry Hunk—whoa.” She scrambled off of the big guy, glasses skewed and head spinning, but she doesn’t care, because… Wow.

A giant, mechanical blue lion—standing at least three stories high—sat in the middle of some secret cave chamber. A blue shield of sorts, stretched outward in a dome, surrounds the thing, humming with an energy that can’t possibly be human. How long had this been here? What was it? Who built it? There’s so many questions, and Pidge founds herself giddy at the prospect.

Was this proof of alien life?

Pidge scrambles to her feet, and tentatively reaches out for the dome. It’s humming, but a short touch doesn’t yield anything but a warm vibration, so Pidge presses her whole hand against it. It’s solid, like a force-field, but not made of any material she is familiar with. “I wonder how you get this thing to open…” she muttered.

“Maybe we just need to knock?” Lance, ever the joker, rapped the dome with his knuckles, and…and it _opened._

The three cadets stared in awe as the dome dissolved before their very eyes, and the mechanical lion _roared._ Pidge can barely form a thought, suddenly feeling very, very small.

The giant head lowered itself, controlled by some unknown force or being. The jaws parted, and Pidge swears it looked like a ramp.

Lance seemed to think so too. He strides up onto, pulled smoothly along like he was in some sort of trance. Hunk and herself scramble after him.

“Should we really be touching this thing?” Hunk worried.

They reach the end of the ramp, and there’s a _cockpit_ of all things, a wide display and a single chair. And it’s empty. No one was controlling it. Then how…?

Lance sat in the chair, and it slid forward to the displays, everything roaring to life in a wash of blue. “Can’t you hear it?” Lance asked excitedly. “It…It’s like it’s trying to _talk_ to me.”

Pidge hears nothing but the whirring of the electronics and the hum of energy. This machine…it was incredible! Like nothing she has ever seen! How did it work? Did it have an AI built into it? Was something controlling it remotely? What kind of alloy was it made out of?

All of a sudden, the lion stands, and Pidge whips her head over to see Lance gripping the controls with a grin plastered on his face. “Let’s see what this baby can do!”

Hunk looked green. “Oh no…”

The lion launches itself—or Lance launches it—into the air, and they cut through the canyon like it never existed in the first place. The ground suddenly looks very small. Oh God, they were _flying._ This thing that looked like a giant cat and wasn’t aerodynamic at all was _flying._

Their movement is unsteady at first, Lance flailing with the controls, but it smooths out remarkably well, and the ground shoots away like a rocket. Or rather, they shoot upward. The atmosphere falls away in the blink of an eye, and Lance whoops. The darkness of space is upon them, and the lion slows and Lance pulls off of the controls. “Whoa…”

Pidge turned her attention to the helm, and feels just as speechless. Earth floats before them, large and beautiful and magnificent, and this was the few that every astronaut dreamed of. And here they were, cadets, who made it here in seconds—and she was still in cargo shorts, no less.

The lion flies forward again, faster and faster, and planets blur past them. Suddenly, an icy planet floats underneath them, and Pidge’s breath catches in her throat. “That’s Kerberos. It…it takes _months_ to get this far.” And she would know. She really would.

The lion roars again, and Lance lifts his hands off of the controls as if to say _I didn’t do that._ A blast fires off from the machine’s mouth, and a swirling blue portal appears. They stare at it, unable to do anything more.

“It wants us to go through it…” Lance finally says, voice small.

They have no idea what’s on the other side. For a moment, Pidge wonder if this is what happened to her family—why they disappeared without a trace. Was there another lion, like this one, that took them away?

It’s absurd, the idea of flying into the unknown. But Pidge can’t help but to hope that her family might be on the other side. Regardless of that, even, there’s something about this that feels _important,_ like it’s so much bigger than them. She can feel herself drawn to the portal, like it was the right thing to do. Judging by Lance’s and Hunk’s pregnant silence, they might be feeling it too.

With a slow movement, Lance presses the control stick forward.

The world zooms past them in a blur of blue and purple, like the warp-speed on _Star Trek,_ and then they’re back out in space. Except Kerberos is gone. Other planets, completely foreign and strange, surround them.

Lance furrowed his brow as the lion spun around slowly without his doing. “It seems…upset.”

“Upset?” Pidge repeated. “How can a machine be _upset?_ ”

Before they can explore the issue further, another portal-thing opens—except much, much bigger—and a giant white ship that looks way too big and magnificent and bulky to be a ship exits the wormhole. The lion turned its head towards that, and a hatch opened.

The lion flew in.

—o0o—

_October 30 th…ish. – Present Day_

 

Pidge sat cross-legged in front of the Green Lion, computer nestled comfortably—more or less—in her lap. This was going no-where.

Ever since Lance had told them about the Galran who activated a bayard, Pidge had been _researching._ For a while now, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to this Voltron-story than they had been told, and the bayard-fiasco only confirmed that suspicion. However, no amount of digging seemed to drudge up anything useful—not even when she plugged her computer into the Castle’s wall and hacked into its database directly.

Well, maybe if she plugged into the console on the main deck, there might be some better results, but that’s too conspicuous for her taste. Even if she _was_ just being paranoid, and the Alteans wouldn’t throw her—their _paladin—_ off the ship for treason or something, Pidge just wasn’t comfortable with her projects being common knowledge. She didn’t want to talk about it.

She sifted through vague reports about the mighty Voltron lions aiding the empire, and yadda-yadda-yadda. There wasn’t a single detail about any of them. Not Voltron’s conception, and not any of its former paladins.

Pidge yawned involuntarily. She’d been at this for…how long? Vargas? No, she fell asleep at one point…maybe it was a few quintants. It was hard to tell. Holts never particularly cared about time when there was a project afoot. Maybe there was just _nothing_ here. Which was stupid, because this was the Castle of Lions, the home and resting place of Voltron. Or, er, three-fifths of Voltron, currently.

She knew that the Red and the Black Lions had been lost for a long time, and the Blue Lion too at one point—because it was on Earth. The Galra had the other two, though, and they sat lifeless—stolen away—for who knows how long. It was a terrible blow to the Alteans, to have their creation taken away from them, and Pidge can’t help but to sympathize. But still. There had to have been a point when Altea had all five of them. And hopefully, finding that would bring answers regarding the inner workings of the Voltron lions themselves, and the bayards.

Wait! Pidge almost missed it at first, but there was a phantom file long since deleted—but nothing digital _ever_ disappears—that looks promising. With a little bit of prodding, Pidge opened it, and there was a picture. It wasn’t the best quality, not since it no longer truly exists in the eyes of the system, but Pidge managed to enlarge it.

There were five— _five—_ beings standing together, dressed in paladin armor. And none of them looked Altean. Wait— _wait._ The red one, in the front, he did. He… Holy cheese crackers, that kind of looked like King Alfor… Well, maybe it isn’t, because the picture is fuzzy and he’s missing the beard, but its uncanny. And— Oh wow. The Black Paladin, standing proudly beside Alfor, was a Galran.

Pidge leaned back against the lion, at a loss for thought. If this was true, no wonder the Alteans didn’t want to talk about it. Apparently…apparently they had been betrayed by a friend.

She didn’t get to think more on the matter, though, because the alarm blared to life. Pidge jerked into action, tossing on her armor in record time, and ran to the deck. Lance and Hunk were already there, though it looked like she was just barely behind them.

Princess Allura stood at the front dressed in a general’s suit, the decorated armor and her hair pulled up in a tight bun making Allura look all the more regal. Chin set straight and arms folded neatly behind her, she addressed them. “Paladins. It has been brought to our attention that an Altean storehouse is being attacked.” Her nose wrinkles, ever so slightly, in rare break in stoic disposition. “By the Galra.”

Hunk startled. “Whoa, the Galra? There can’t be that many inside the Empire, right? I thought you guys had defenses!” Allura glares carefully at him, and Hunk shut his mouth.

She continued after a long-suffering sigh, turning to pace towards the console. “It’s the source of this quadrant’s weapons—without them, the people here would be left weak and defenseless. They probably want the weapons for themselves.” Allura takes a moment to dispel the bitterness, but it doesn’t quite work. Pidge isn’t sure what the bad blood between the Alteans and the Galra is—though now she thinks she has an idea—but it seemed like the Galra rebels were always trying to spite the Alteans and everything they tried to do.

Allura turned on her heel again, quickly coming back to face them in the eye, a fire burning behind hers. “We are the closest dispatch to their position—and you will show them the might of Voltron.”

The lions definitely would be the fastest way to end the siege; from what Pidge saw of the universe’s technology, Voltron really was unparalleled. She just hopes they can handle it. They’ve fought in the lions before, yes, but it hasn’t been long, and it hasn’t been any major battles. The most they have really done is shoot some Galra scouts out of the sky and ward off giant creatures plaguing some of the planets in the Coalition. They weren’t exactly the most experienced. But they were the best shot that depot had.

Lance squared his shoulders, voicing what happened to be a unanimous feeling. “Send the coordinates, princess.”

—o0o—

Pidge has never seen this many Galra in one place before. They had only been strays of one or two before, like a bug that managed to infest the otherwise protected system, slipping in through the cracks. Now, it was like looking at an honest-to-goodness army.

Or battalion, at the very least. It’s not even that large of a storehouse, all things considered, but there are dozens of them that she can see—and that’s not counting what she _can’t_ see.

She hovered the storehouse in the Green Lion, tail poised to attack. She just had to wait for the remaining and still-alive Altean guards to move, then… Now! She laid down fire at the base of the Galra regiment, where they have taken fortitude. Pidge needed to drive the ground troops back.

“Incoming!” Hunk yelled. Pidge turned the lion just in time dodge fire from one of the enemy fighter crafts that slipped past the Yellow Lion. The fighter was fast and agile, she’ll give them that, but it just couldn’t a hit from a Voltron Lion. When Pidge finally managed to nail the guy on the wing, it careened out of the sky.

Unfortunately, two more came up on her, peppering her lion with laser fire. The lion was incredibly durable, yes, but it couldn’t take too much abuse. She clenched her teeth as the cockpit rattled, fists gripping the controls, and ducked out from under the ships’ range and flew beneath them. The fighters were quick to align themselves, but Pidge was quicker. With a swipe of the Green Lion’s tail blaster, the enemies crashed into the ground below.

Large as the Galra’s attack was, they just couldn’t compare to _them_ , and the might of the Castle of Lions itself. The fighter ships were dwindling, and the ground troops were forced back into cover, favoring a retreat. Pidge grinned. She totally had this! Experience or no, nothing was really that bad compared to the lions.

Something crashed into the Green Lion, and it tumbled backwards. “What the—?!” Pidge felt her jaw rattle. Her HUB was flashing warnings, and she could faintly feel something that felt like panic from her lion, or at the very least, a confusing barrage of input.

“ _Dios mio…”_ Lance breathed over the comms. _“Is that…?”_

Pidge steadied her lion with some effort, only to gape at her attacker with wide, unbelieving eyes.

The Red Lion of Voltron hovered in front of them, blaster poised at the ready. Pidge knew that the Galra had stolen it, but… It was being _piloted._ Sure, the lions could move on their own sometimes, but never anything to this extent; someone was in there. And they sure as hell didn’t seem to be on Voltron’s side.

Gritting her teeth, Pidge tried to urge her lion to attack, to do _something_ , but the controls were heavy. Her lion was frozen in place.

A comm. in her lion crackled to life. The Red Lion. “Don’t come any closer,” the pilot growled in a male, somewhat young, voice. “Or I _will_ take you down.”

“And why would we listen to you?” Pidge snapped back. Who was this guy to turn a Voltron lion against its own? Not to mention, there was only one of him, and three of them.

He wasn’t kidding when he said he would take them. Whoever this guy was, he was _good._ She, Lance, and Hunk scrambled just land a solid hit on the guy, but the Red Lion was much, much faster than any of theirs. This pilot— _paladin,_ her mind supplied grudgingly—was no joke. Pidge is just left wondering why the Red Lion would accept a Galra paladin.

The fight was awkward, though. She could feel her lion go stiff beneath her, and even the Red Lion’s attacks didn’t seem as vicious as they could be.

It wasn’t until much later when Pidge realized that the lions themselves were the ones holding back.

Suddenly, the Red Lion stopped, turned, and left. A wormhole opened up, and the Galra fighters disappeared into it, followed by the lion. Pidge could faintly hear Allura screaming for someone—some Altean drone—to follow them, but the wormhole closed just as fast as it came.

They got away.

Pidge leaned back in her chair, the adrenaline wearing off and being quickly replaced with confoundment. One question in particular was plastered at the forefront of her mind.

If a Galran could pilot a lion of Voltron, were the chosen paladins really all that special?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as it turns out, the Earth _hasn't_ been assimilated by the Alteans! (But the Galra are really good at jumping to conclusions.) Also, the Red Lion has been revealed... That can't possibly go wrong.
> 
> As always, I love to hear y'all's comments and thoughts! Also, I'm currently working on some concept art for the AU, which I'll post a link to whenever I finish a batch. (I should have Shiro and Keith by the next chapter; yay!)
> 
> If, uh, if anybody is bored and wants to draw for this fic send that good stuff my way!
> 
> Until next time, my dearies!


	4. Seeing Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turns out giant mechanical space cats are just like real cats: moody. Or at least, the Red Lion is.

_"Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place."_

\- Daniel H. Pink

* * *

 

An ancient, powerful, giant lion-shaped spaceship was giving Keith the cold shoulder. Somehow, this isn’t how he imagined his life turning out to be like.

“Why are you doing this?!” The Red Lion sat in her hangar, back poised to face Keith and the entrance; she didn’t move, no matter what Keith said or did.

Why was he putting up with this? Right. Because her irritation was so evident that he could feel it from _anywhere on the base._ Keith sighed, pinching his nose. “What did I do?”

Images of his fight with Altea’s paladins flashed through his mind, unbidden. Keith winced. The Red Lion would be mad, wouldn’t she? He prompted her to fight other lions of Voltron. He imagined that since the lions are supposed to be of one unit, fighting each other would not be pleasant. He had felt it in the battle—Red holding herself back, her displeasure evident. Luckily, it had seemed the other lions had felt the same way. That, or the other paladins were really terrible pilots.

Keith huffed irately. “I’m sorry, okay? You know why we had to do that—they were working with the Alteans.” Nothing. “I can’t promise we won’t do that again; you _know_ that.” Red growled, an agitated rumble echoing in his mind. Who would have thought that machines could throw temper tantrums?

The growling sharpened in intensity, eliciting a wince from the paladin. “Ow—ow, I know, I’m sorry.” Nothing he did or said or thought seemed to calm the lioness. This was ridiculous. He couldn’t function with her palpable irritation thrumming through their bond and in his head. Keith slid down to the floor with a groan, leaning against her hind side. “What do you want from me?”

He didn’t really expect an answer, because Keith knew—deep from the blossoming bond in his chest and soul—what was really bothering his lion. Voltron was divided. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal; the lions were powerful by themselves, and this way, Alfor could not assemble what could possibly be the most dangerous weapon in the universe. But this wasn’t just about possession and power—it was about the lions too. Somewhere in all of this, their quintessence manifested, and in granting them great power, it granted them the power to feel. And to be separated… It put a hole in their soul. Only a paladin, someone connected to the lions on a strangely intimate level, could really understand this. And Keith definitely understood.

When Keith had first gotten into this mess, he had been viewing it with a narrow scope: find Shiro. For all his life, Keith had never heard a peep from the Galra. Only faintly did he remember his own mother, like an echo in his memory, telling him stories of their valor and their sacrifice. She died when Keith was five, and to this day, he doesn’t know how. But that wasn’t important; what was important was that he was left alone, an alien on a world he knew no different from. His dad left too—went driving, beer in hand, and never came back.

The Galra were all about family. But the little hybrid never really had one… until Shiro.

Shiro stayed. He stayed with the broken and angry foster kid, stayed with hot-headed cadet, and stayed with the alien. Keith never knew how much he needed someone to stay before.

And then Shiro left. But not because he chose to, but because the idiot was a dreamer and wanted to fly the Kerberos mission and got abducted by the Alteans even though Keith begged him to stay and warned him of dangers Keith only faintly knew existed because Keith had been _scared_ and selfish but he had been _right._

Keith had had a hole in his soul too.

He had been able to scour the universe to find his brother, however. Keith had flown his mother’s old broken-down scouting craft with nothing but tenacity and hope, found his estranged race and an uncle he never knew he had, and he hadn’t given up until Shiro was back with him.

Red wanted nothing more than to do the same to her sisters—Keith could feel it.

But the Lions of Voltrons weren’t mere mortals; they couldn’t truly exist without a paladin to complete their individual soul, and they couldn’t fully come together without the stars aligning—or for there to be consequences.

Their bond was still relatively young in the scheme of things, only five months in the making, but those five months had felt like an eternity to Keith. And in that time, he had come to know the Red Lion—and vice versa—in a way that Keith never thought he would know anybody, except for maybe Shiro.

So if he thought about it, he knew that Red wasn’t _really_ mad at _him._ Except for a little bit.

She purred sadly, and it rumbled in his chest. An image of space and trashed Altean ships flashed through his mind with a tinge of hopefulness, and Keith chuckled dryly. It was like Red was saying _I’m still upset but this is how you can make it up to me._ Keith concurred.

But they couldn’t.

“We’re under house arrest, Red,” he growled irately. “We can’t go beating up the Alteans, no matter how much fun that would be.”

Zarkon had forbade Keith from flying the Red Lion anywhere outside their hidden space pocket. _“The Alteans will target you, and try to reclaim the Red Lion,”_ Zarkon had said. _“It is best to keep her—and you—safe here.”_ Worst yet, Thace and even Shiro were just as adamant. It might not be as bad if Keith flew any other lion besides the _Red_ one, because Emperor Alfor would most likely be three times as desperate to reclaim his own lion.

Red growled, her intention clear. _Traitor._ At least Keith knew that she held no more love for her old paladin after he tried to take advantage of her. The Red Lion did not forgive easily, nor forget.

Still, as much as he—begrudgingly—acknowledged their reasoning, Keith didn’t need to be mother-henned. He and Red could handle themselves just fine.

“We can fly around the base—it’s better than nothing,” Keith finally conceded. For the first time in hours, the Red Lion moved, and lowered her head.

 

 

Flying was exhilarating no matter what context it was in—especially when Keith was flying with Red—but a space pocket devoid of positively _everything_ except for the base itself was boring. He was going stir-crazy already.

A bell sounded, long and deep, eliciting a quick twitch from Keith’s ear. Meal time.

Eating was the last thing on Keith’s mind right now, but if he missed it, there would be no more food until the morning. For ease and efficiency, all the Galra here were on a food schedule, even the non-combatants. Two meals a day, morning and night. Clean and simple. People will filter in the mess hall for the varga food would be dispensed, but if anyone didn’t make the time slot, Sal would have already gathered all the leftover food for reuse. (If Keith thought about that too hard, even he would be a little grossed out by just how _old_ some of the stuff they ate was.)

Keith grabbed a tray and watched as food goo slopped onto the surface, ears tilting backwards. He changed his mind; he really wasn’t hungry.

Dumping his meal into the disposal, Keith crossed the courtyard. Or, well, what was called the courtyard anyway—with the base being positioned in the middle of an empty space pocket, there was no ‘outside’ and the ‘open air courtyard’ was really just a high ceiling with lots of synthetic lights.

Keith missed the sun.

“Hey! Hey Keith!” An ear swiveled towards the loud and cheery cadets, his gaze slowly following suit when he realized he couldn’t avoid them. The three of them tried to wave him over. “Come sit with us!” Daer’zen, the speaker, was a particularly adamant and _clingy_ cadet, training under Prorok to be a Guard. And for some reason, he and his buddies were always trying to talk to him. And ask him questions. _Lots_ of questions.

But even though they were probably about the same age—give or take on account of human biology—he outranked them, and therefore had no problem ignoring them. “I’m busy.” He wasn’t, because he was stuck doing _nothing,_ but that wasn’t their concern. Daer’zen would probably only try to bug him about it.

In his haste to get away, however, Keith smacked into someone else.

Shiro managed to save the wobbling tray and precariously balanced drink in one hand, a testament to his reflexes. “Hey Keith,” he smiled, almost teasing. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

Keith only blinked. “…where’s your arm…?”

The man grimaced, annoyance flashing in his gaze and posture. His right arm ended below the shoulder, neatly capped off. “Nothing was wrong with it. It just took a hit by one of the Altean lasers, and today, Maahox spotted something with his eagle-vision and took it for ‘maintenance.’” Shiro’s eyes lingered on his empty side for a moment too long, and Keith snapped his own gaze away from it, refusing to look. He knew how self-conscious Shiro could be about it; and after the Alteans lopped it off for their sick and twisted purposes, Keith could understand why. A flash of anger burned through him at the thought of what they did to him.

“You know Maahox,” Keith said instead, swallowing the rage thickly. It would only make Shiro feel worse. “He’s probably just buffing and polishing it right now. It’s his ‘greatest masterpiece’—” He accompanied the phrase with air quotes. “—and he wants to make sure it’s perfect.”

“Yeah, well, he should go take Sendak’s arm for a change,” Shiro muttered darkly, though there was no malice in his form. He placed the tray on one of the many tables situated in the courtyard and sat down; Keith sat next to him.

Keith managed a smirk. “Oh, you know Sendak’s is the ‘old model’—face it, Shiro. You’re his favorite. Until his next project, at least.” Shiro scowled, but the two of them ended up chuckling anyways.

The banter was familiar, and Keith could feel the tension slip from Shiro’s shoulders. Good. He felt it fade from his own, too.

They fell into a comfortable lapse of silence, Shiro poking half-heartedly at the goo. “Vyyra is a really good addition to the Blade and all,” he said finally, “but sometimes I wish she was still the head chef.”

He hummed in agreement. Vyyra had made really good food—even Keith had to be impressed. However, she had felt restless and ended up joining the ranks of the Blade in order to scout the universe, which meant that Sal took over, and well… Vyyra was missed widely in the mess hall.

Shiro stood up. “I should go; Tryn wanted to see me.” Keith could tell that Shiro wasn’t thrilled to see the resident medic—though he was sure that the fussy and expressive vell was nothing like the druids. She probably noticed Shiro’s lack-of-arm and wanted to check the scar tissue. (No one was exempted from her insistent check-ups of this sort; once, Keith even saw the small woman drag Sendak into her office by the ear.) “You want to spar afterwards?”

Keith almost missed the question, and his ears swiveled towards Shiro in surprise, the barest of flickers to his stump catching in Keith’s peripheral. “You sure that’s fair?” he blurted.

The older man looked carefully blank for a moment, and Keith suppressed a wince, but then Shiro smirked. “You’re right—I’ll wipe the floor with you.” For a moment, he belated remembered just how long Shiro had survived on that wild planet after he escaped Altea, with one arm no less. Maybe he really was screwed.

He grinned. “You’re on.”

—o0o—

Alfor reviewed the footage carefully—coldly—and refused to give into that bubbling feeling of rage in his chest. He was king—emperor, some might even say—and given that, he could not afford to let his countenance slip into unruly emotion.

But for now, he was alone, so the king let his fists curl and shake at his sides as he watched the Red Lion be forced to turn against her comrades. Alfor knew well that the bond between man and lion could be contrived, yet someone had piloted the beast—someone who was not the lion’s true paladin.

The Red Lion had been cruelly taken from him, their bond wrenched apart through distance and magic. Perhaps Zarkon had discovered a way to bewitch the lion, just as he had found a way to keep her from returning to him. It wasn’t enough now that the Galra wanted to keep Voltron from saving the universe—now they were intent to use it for their own selfish purposes.

“I will return you to me, my lion,” Alfor vowed quietly. Voltron will be restored to her glory.

It was regrettable that the other lions had chosen the humans as their paladins, but Alfor could understand, in a way. After being cloistered in some distant and dark place of the universe—Earth, he recalled; he would have to look into liberating that sector eventually—by her wayward and misguided paladin, the Blue Lion was probably grateful to be found, and chose the human child as a coping mechanism. The Yellow and Green Lions were most likely similarly disjointed, and chose their paladins according to the Blue Lion. It could just be a phase. With Voltron having only one set of paladins before, Alfor could not say with certainty that he knew everything about how they worked, but he knew their purpose well. Once he rescued the Red Lion, Alfor doesn’t doubt that the other lions would sense his capable and experienced presence in the bond, and shift their standards to adjust to the level of the true paladin. He had many warriors who would make fine paladins, once the lions were made aware of their presence and were no longer disorientated by their time of isolation.

For now, however, the Red Lion would be his priority. “Hail General Aldus.” The computer complied to the voice command, and promptly contacted the person in question.

The man appeared obediently in the screen, trim in blue and white armor and close shaven white hair. “Yes, Emperor?”

“The Red Lion has been spotted in sector QR8, alongside the Galra rebels.” Alfor folded his hands neatly behind his back, maintaining a proper countenance. “I am tasking you with freeing it from enemy hands.”

The general straightened with the weight of the duty. “Yes, sir.” Alfor knew that he will strive to complete his task by whatever means necessary; the general knew exactly what was at stake. And while Allura was currently the commander of the Castle of Lions, Alfor did not yet trust her to be capable of liberating the Red Lion. She was much too young and inexperienced. And Alfor did not yet want to expose her to evils in this world such as the Galra, and what must be done to them.  

Aldus saluted before he cut the transmission. “I will not fail you, father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Shiro's arm _is_ removable in this verse! (Cause I'm 99% sure in canon the Galra went LOL and fused the thing to his body. Which is actually not healthy. But meh.)
> 
> And Aldus actually is canon...sort of... He was mentioned in a supplementary book for Defenders of the Universe as Alfor's son. So there. 
> 
> Guess what? I have art!!! Here's just some concept art for Shiro's and Keith's character designs. It's a little rushed, so don't judge too hard. And fuzzy Keith is fun! (Except his ears were evil.) This is posted to the DeviantArt account, where I lurk by the same name.
> 
> Also, just as a warning, college starts tomorrow, so my schedule might get a little wonky. Not that I had a update schedule to begin with. Meh.


	5. Through the Veil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The paladins save a village from a monster. Or, at least, they thought they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeeey.... Sorry I'm a little late. Again, I'll throw college under the bus. Also the fact that this is a little bit of a transition chapter. (With a suckish title, but whatever.)

_"That’s why they make those people in the asylum weave baskets and make rag rugs. It keeps them quiet. If they didn’t have the baskets they might find out what’s really wrong and…do something. Something terrible.”  
_

\- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

* * *

 

“I’m not saying your dish is _bad,_ I’m just saying it could use some, uh, seasoning!”

The chef, a small toothpick of a man named Javon, scowled, and Hunk tried to backtrack some more. He hadn’t meant to insult him, _really,_ but his food was just…unpalatable. Though Hunk was sure it wasn’t just the doing of Javon, after that one time Coran tried his own hand at a ‘paladin meal’… Hunk just believed that Alteans had no real taste buds. And he wanted to fix that. For the good and integrity of food itself!

“Paladin, I insist that I am well qualified for my job. My meals provide you with sufficient nutrition, do they not?” Javon inquired blandly, a tick in his navy brow.

Hunk resisted the urge to groan. Alteans were some of the most proud and stubborn people he had ever met—and he was a _human._ It was hard to get more stubborn than that. “Of course they do!” Hunk agreed placatingly. “I was just suggesting that you could make them more _flavorful._ ” At Javon’s increasingly cross expression, Hunk hurried to continue. “On my planet, food is… food is an art form. We like to make our food pleasing to the eyes and to the tongue, as well as nutritious. It makes it more…interesting! And, I was just hoping that maybe I could help you make something like that. To share our culture with you!” And to remind him of home.

It’s not that Hunk wasn’t glad that he was given this opportunity to do good. He just missed Earth, his home, his family… They left so suddenly. His mom and his sister and aunts and uncles and grandparents probably thought he was dead. How long had it been? Time worked differently out here in space. It was just one of the many little comforts Hunk never thought he would miss until it was gone.

If food that tasted a little more Earthen was the one thing he could have, Hunk would take it.

Javon looked considerate. “You propose a very interesting experience, Paladin,” he conceded stiffly, but there was no denying the spark of interest in his magenta eye. “I will allow you to show me.”

Hunk grinned. For a chef to allow another into his workspace was a big deal, and the Alteans normally weren’t so lenient. But an artist was an artist, no matter the race or culture.

After a lot of questions, some biting remarks from Javon whenever Hunk mixed up ingredients (alien food was weird, okay?), and a considerate mess later, Hunk stood proudly over what was the closest thing space could ever come to producing the wonder that was chocolate chip cookies. Simple, perhaps, but a classic.

He gestured excitedly to the steamy plate. “C’mon, man! Try one!”

“It is inappropriate for a cook to eat firs—”

Hunk leveled an unimpressed look at Javon. Alteans and their ‘appropriate behavior’… Well, this was an Earth food, so Earth rules won. “And on my planet, chef gets first pick.” He shoved a cookie into the Altean’s hand. “For the cultural experience.”

Finally, the cook conceded and took a tentative bite from the (albeit thin and green) cookie; he tried to compose himself, but Hunk didn’t miss the way his eyes widened. “This is… quite enlightening.” Javon finished the snack, a ghost of a smile on the normally staid man’s face. Yes! Score one for human comfort food! “Thank you, paladin.” With a small bow, the chef ever so graciously shoved Hunk from the kitchen with the plate, though that phantom smile still hadn’t quite left.

Getting other Alteans to try them was less successful; people rarely deviated from their intended paths or jobs to pay Hunk much mind, paladin or no. At least Coran took one—though the advisor was always enthusiastic about these things—though he was much more disposed to weird Altean cooking. (“A marvelous experience, Number One, but it lacks that slimy element, hmm?”) Lance, however, was positively thrilled.

“They ‘aste ju’ like ‘em!” the Latino managed through a mouth full. “I mean,” he continued, swallowing, “the color is, like, really disconcerting, and _abuela_ made them fluffier—no offense Hunk—”

“None taken.”

“—but this is still the best thing I have ever eaten in space.”

“I say this from the bottom of my heart, Hunk.” Pidge’s hand was on her heart, expression serious. “ _Thank you._ ”

The three paladins took the time to enjoy themselves, sharing horror stories of Altean cooking (“and one time, I swear, the orange centipede thing _moved_ and Coran didn’t even flinch!”) whilst munching on what proved to be an edible use of the ingredients that the Castle of Lions stocked. Hunk was a little disappointed that he hadn’t been able to share this with many of the Alteans, as a gift in return for everything they had done for them, but he was glad that his friends at least had brightened considerably. He almost didn’t notice when someone else entered the Green Lion’s hangar.

“Do you need something—oh, princess!” Pidge switched from a bored tone, to standing in alarm. Lance and Hunk followed suit. Princess Allura rarely came down to the hangars; if there was a problem, she normally called them up to the bridge. At other times, Allura was busy in the upper levels where the navigation rooms and data stores were, helping more so with the direction of the ship, not its maintenance.

Allura offered them a small smile, but otherwise appeared as upright and regal as she ever did. As the commander of the ship, and as a royal daughter of the empire, Allura always did well to appear as such. Hunk had to admire her poise, but sometimes he had to wonder how exhausting it was to compose oneself all the time. “Paladins,” she greeted. “There is a new assignment.”

Pidge raised a brow. “You could have called us up to the bridge. There was no need to come down here, princess.” Hunk didn’t miss the way she stood conveniently in front of her work station.

The princess did not seem bothered by the edge of defense in Pidge’s voice. “I was already down on this level,” she waved off. “I figured that this would be most efficient, to alert you here.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, princess.” Hunk knew that she had enough on her plate without her going to the towers, which were arguably on the farthest end of the castle-ship. “What is it that we need to do?”

Allura offered up one of the portable maps, that emanated from an orb and projected outward. “There is a colony in the Gryfe sector, on the planet Hexxor, that is being ravaged by a koopar,” she explained gravely.

“A koopar?” Lance repeated, a tone of incredulity in his brow. Hunk had to agree; the name didn’t seem very scary. “What’s that?”

“It is a massive insect that feeds off of mass quantities of wood. The Hexxorians of a forest dwelling people.” Allura brought up a picture to demonstrate, and all three of the paladins squeaked at the sight. The creature looked like the unholy offspring of Mothica and a wasp.

“Wait,” Hunk backed up with a wave of his hand. “If the koopars eat wood, and the Hexxorians live in the forest, why hasn’t this been a problem before?” You would think that if the planet’s fauna was that bent on eating wooden houses, then the people would settle in the mountains.

“The koopar is not native to Hexxor,” Allura explained. “It might have stowed away on an economic vessel as a larva, and took to its new environment a little too well.”

Ah, invasive species. Turns out space had the same problems.

Lance was peering at the map curiously, drawing attention with a hum. “I have to ask—why here? There’s more alerts in closer sectors.” Sure enough, there were little red blips all over, including where they were and their neighbors; the Gryfe system was about four sectors over, requiring a wormhole jump.

Allura drew her mouth in a line, and Hunk resisted the urge to wince. Sometimes, they were prone to forget that she was their commanding officer, and royalty at that, and that they technically shouldn’t question her too much. But Allura was young—at least comparatively—and there were times that they got caught up in the moment. Besides, Lance was terrible with authority figures anyways. Luckily, she didn’t press the issue, and instead turned with a pained look on her face.

“There is Galra activity in the sector. Commander Aldus wanted Voltron to be present…as a show of force. You will not be engaging them—just the koopar.” Judging by the pensive and almost irritated draw to her mouth, there was more to the story than she was letting on. Maybe she wasn’t thrilled that her older brother wanted to use them as a my-horse-is-bigger-than-your-horse show; Hunk couldn’t say that he was thrilled at the prospect either. “We’ll arrive above Hexxor in approximately fifteen dobashes.”

They made to get to their lions. Lance left in a hurry, his lion’s hangar on the other corner of the castle-ship; at least Hunk’s was adjacent to Pidge’s. Princess Allura made her way to the exit, and on a whim, Hunk caught up to her. “Javon and I made these earlier—it’s a dish from my planet. There’s one left, if you want one,” he offered shyly.

To his surprise, Allura took the cookie after a pause. “Thank you, paladin.” Hunk took off to get his armor, but he didn’t miss the way she smiled softly after a bite, humming in surprised contentment.

—o0o—

The koopar was so much worse in person; it was the size of the Blue Lion, and it _spit acid._ Hunk vowed never to complain about the wasps back home ever again.

“Hunk! Watch out!” He registered Lance’s shouted warning just in time to duck under the open and charging mouth of the koopar. The Yellow Lion was slow, however, the legs of the beast clipped his backside; luckily, what the Yellow Lion lacked in speed, it more than made up for in durability—and most times, that was all that Hunk needed.

He gripped his lion’s controls and steadied themselves from their shaky decent. Lance was trying to shoot the koopar in the face while Pidge dodged and weaved around its monstrous beating wings to try to find a weak spot.

“Hey guys?” Pidge’s voice crackled to life through their lions’ comms. “The joints to these wings look vulnerable. If we can ground it…”

“It’ll lack maneuverability and be defenseless!” Hunk finished excitedly. “You’re a genius!”

It didn’t take visual confirmation to know that Pidge was smirking. “I know.”

“Too bad this thing—ah!—won’t hold _still,_ ” Lance grunted, the Blue Lion narrowly dodging a spray of acid as the koopar twisted its body to attack. For such a large bug, it was agile.

“You two keep it busy then!” Pidge barked. She pulled the Green Lion back, aligning it with the ever-moving back of the koopar. The mammoth-wasp was already bending upwards to meet her when Hunk smashed his lion’s forepaws into its head, forcing it back down.

It’s barbed tail whipped around to smack the Blue Lion, eliciting another yelp from its paladin. “Easier said than done, Pidge! Why do you have to be the one to shoot its back?” Lance whined.

“Because my lion is the smallest and easiest to maneuver.” She fired a cannon at the joint, but the koopar shuddered out of the way and it bounced off of its armor.

“You’re doing a _real_ bang-up job, there.”

“I’d like to see _you_ try, you useless bag of shi—”

“Okay!” Hunk interjected before the banter quickly escalated into yelling and cursing, like it often did. “Lance, let’s switch. I think Yellow can do a better job at holding the tail.”

“And I’ll be acid-fodder, got it,” Lance mumbled back irritably, but he flew the Blue Lion to the front anyways. The koopar tried to follow Hunk around, but got quickly distracted by Lance. Okay, okay, that was good, now he just needed to… Oh dear, this was going to be harder than he thought.

Hunk tried to pin the whip-like tail underneath his lion and against a tree or something, but it moved too fast, instead jerking the Yellow Lion around with each strike. Finally, his lion’s jaw clamped around the koopar’s tail. “Yes!—uh-oh…” The tail was stronger than it looked, and with the Yellow Lion attached, it tried to smash them broad-side into an impossibly large tree. However, the lion’s hind legs dug into the base, steadying herself; Hunk had hardly been aware of commanding the lion to do that. A warm rumble, like the way his mother laughed—a full and hearty sound from the belly—filled the hollow of his chest and somehow, Hunk felt assured that their position would hold.

The front part of the koopar suddenly froze—as in, _literally froze._ “Did you guys just see that!” Lance whooped. “My lion has a freeze ray!”

In the fortuitous moment that the thing was finally still save for its angry wings, Pidge fired the shot; the koopar shuddered, before crashing to the ground.

“I guess you could say that my lion is the—”

“Lance, don’t you dare—!”

“— _coolest._ ”

Hunk could almost hear Pidge’s facepalm. “You’re an idiot.”

In the resounding silence, the three paladins stared at the fallen koopar, almost forgotten in Lance’s bad puns, before breaking out into a cheer. They did it! However, Hunk’s expression morphed as he stared at the smoking form of the koopar in the wreckage of the trees. “We should check to make sure the Hexxorians are okay.” That was their home that lay somewhere below where the fight had taken place. The thick canopy of trees made it difficult to see exactly where it was—and Hunk hoped that very fact helped to shield them—but it was an adequate concern.

Lance and Pidge made affirmative noises, and the three descended. It took some creative maneuvering to get their lions down to the ground level without destroying anything (especially on Hunk’s part) but they eventually managed it.

The Hexxorians were a tall, willowy people, with long limbs and thick deep brown skin. They had emerged from the trees, descending from the platforms that elevated them from the ground—which from an engineering standpoint was _really cool_ —and sidled up to the fallen beast and paladins.

Hunk gave a little wave. “Hey there—we’re the Paladins of Voltron.” He forced himself to straighten a bit, and offered them a smile. “We hope that this koopar didn’t damage your village?”

A small bout of murmuring broke out among the Hexxorians, before a masculine appearing figure in a leafy headdress and low-cut tunic stepped forward in a low bow. Whoa—that wasn’t what he was expecting; they weren’t royalty! Maybe bowing was part of their culture? “We humbly thank you for Altea’s assistance in aiding us with the koopar,” he rumbled, before finally rising to normal height.

“Uh, no problem, man—it’s what we do.” Hunk shifted uncomfortably. They were… _really formal._ And not necessarily in a nice way; just a proper and stiff way, like how a student would act in front of the principal: nervously. “But is your village okay?”

They exchanged cryptic glances; the spokesman bowed again. “We are still capable of production; any damage sustain is non-consequential.”

“No one is hurt, are they?” Lance pressed, speaking for him this time. He shot Hunk a sidelong glance, accompanied by the scrunch of the eyebrows, that told him that he wasn’t the only one finding the Hexxorians’ behavior odd.

The Hexxorian looked up in honest surprise at the question—and that, probably, made Hunk’s stomach twist the most. “Ah, no—no, nobody was severely injured. And once again, we express gratitude towards the empire for your benevolence.” With another bow, the Hexxorians scrambled back into the thick of the trees, not eager to linger.

The paladins watched in confoundment as they left. It was almost like…they were _scared_ of them. Wary, at the very least. It wasn’t like it affected their politeness, though—it wasn’t a primal fear. Something about it just didn’t feel right; it made Hunk feel like they made such a show of gratitude in fear of…something.

And Hunk liked to think that he wasn’t scary. The lions, he supposed, were a little disconcerting in their size and might. Though somehow, he thought that it wasn’t the paladins of Voltron that had the Hexxorians so nervous…

—o0o—

Commander Aldus folded his hands neatly behind his back, observing the events through the bridge’s viewing deck with satisfaction. Truly, the capture of the Red Lion was going to be easier than anticipated.

As he expected, sending the Voltron lions into this otherwise calm sector brought the Galra rats to the surface: a small ship had been detected, obscured by the dark side of a moon. The ship was too big to be a simple scout, but it wasn’t much. Bah. Oh well. Any Galra would do, for now.

Naturally, they were no match for Aldus’s royal fleet; the Castle of Arus was a pristine and formidable ship, capable of taking down planets: the Galra was no match for him. There were only four of them on the ship when it was apprehended; one had died in the siege. One of them had armor different from the others, suggesting a semblance of rank, or whatever the Galra pretended to have.

Now, he just had to keep this up until the Red Lion and whatever the Galra could possibly throw at them came running to save their spies. And when they do come, Aldus will enjoy beating them down; they have mocked the Altean Empire for far too long. They were sneaky—like the dishonorable cowards they were—but he was ready for them.

The Red Lion would be at his father’s command once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And things get interesting starting next chapter! Mwahahaha! What do you think will happen next? Hmmm? (Well, I know, but that's a moot point.)
> 
> Also, I....do not have any more concept art. But I'll get to it. Eventually. 
> 
> Until next time, my lovelies!


	6. May You Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Galra don't have enough man-power to always recover those that go MIA. But with someone important to them in Altean hands... They might want to try a proactive approach for a change. Possibly.

_"The worst sin against our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that is the essence of inhumanity."_

\- George Bernard Shaw

* * *

 

_A mechanical trill hummed through the air, reverberating in his skull. It filled his head and shook his veins and accompanied the shivers that wracked his body, the cold metal pressed against him a cruel, mocking compliment to the ringing in his ears._

_His bare skin settled into the numbness brought on by the room that smelled of chemicals and of death, but it was never enough to keep the sharp claws from aggravating his frayed nerves. There was a certain humiliation that never died completely as they touched and prodded him like the naked animal they saw him as: an experiment, a secret to be unlocked. It was a cold, sort of taciturn sadism that tore down the autonomy of sentient creatures faster than mindless monstrosity._

_His name was Takashi Shirogane. He was a human being._

_“Begin test sixty-three.” The woman with the pallid gray skin and white hair stood over him, milky eyes hard and expressionless. If there was anyone he hated, it was her; she took his dignity, but she could not take his anger and his pain. Nor his mind. He could not understand the Altean’s language, but after enough times, he interrupted the gist of it._

_He expected the bite, but a whimper tore from his throat anyways as the electric prod pressed into his abdomen. The last one lasted sixty-two ticks—a long second, from what he had gathered. This one would be sixty-three. Shiro counted._

_His eyesight blurred at forty-two. It was almost disappointing—he had remained conscious for longer before. But, that was before they had begun the starvation trials two…three?...days ago. It was the third time they limited his food; never on this long of a test though._

_Shiro clamped down his jaw and focused on the buzzing pain, and not his thoughts. He was not their lab rat; he was a human being. They could torture and test on him all they wanted, the depraved bastards, but they could not lead him to think of himself as anything less. He refused it!_

_The anger helped. This time, he lasted to tick-sixty before he lost consciousness._

The mechanical trill hummed through the air, reverberating in his skull. Shiro’s breath hitched, goosebumps prickling in his skin, but the warmth of his armor and the violet lights quelled them quickly. (Many times, he had teased the Galra about their strange affinity to the color purple, but most times, Shiro was just glad that everything wasn’t electric blue.)

Shiro approached the console with a hefty exhale through the nose. It was fine, everything was _fine._

As Lieutenant of the Blade, it was one of his responsibilities to keep track of all of the Blades on duty, and that meant making a lot of house calls. Shiro never really thought that his position among the Galra would include the roles of a secretary, but that was fine. He knew just as well as anyone else here that knowing exactly where all of your people were, and what state they were in, was _important._ And a luxury not everyone had…

He answered the call quickly, ending the trill. And Shiro couldn’t help a fond roll of the eyes; his next scheduled check-in was nothing if not punctual. So punctual that Thace called _him,_ instead of the other way around.

“Commander,” Shiro greeted. “You’re more eager for these check-ins than most of the Blades are.” Try as he might, he couldn’t keep the corner of his lip from lifting upward in a teasing smirk.

Thace answered with something of a knowing smirk of his own. “I’m sure that’s true, knowing how fidgety your squad can be.” The man flitted his eyes over his shoulder in a gesture. “If Junvvi is any indication of a Blade’s attention span, it’s a wonder you keep up with these reports at all.”

Shiro shook his head, an amused snort escaping his nose. “Junvvi is young—give him a chance.” He allowed himself another smirk. “Unless you don’t think you’re up for handling him…?”

Thace scowled, and Shiro had to choke down a laugh. The older Galran was easier to tease than most gave him credit for—Keith was the reigning champion of eliciting emotive responses from the man—but Shiro always secretly counted it as a victory if he managed to get a rise out of the normally serious reconnaissance expert. It made things feel _normal._ Especially since aside from Keith, Thace was the closest thing Shiro could consider family—his _actual_ familial relationship to Keith and mother-hen qualities some key factors in that assessment.

Now, Thace was _technically_ at the mercy of Shiro. While Thace was practically his own division of the GRC—unless you considered Kala, he was really the only information tactician they had—and thus wasn’t under the same regime as the Blade of Marmora, he was accompanied by three Blades on one of his scouting missions, and therefore fell under Blade jurisdiction. At least when the whereabouts of their operatives was concerned.

“I’m not that old…” Thace grumbled, before snapping back to the screen in a dignified manner. “We just entered the Gryfe sector, northeast quadrant in concordance with Gryfe’s star,” he reported. Shiro plugged in the coordinates that Thace pinged him into the log. “This is my last stop before returning. We’ll exit on the southeast end.”

“ETA?” Shiro prompted.

Thace thought about it for a minute. “Three quintants, most likely. It’s hard to say—there is some…unusual…activity here,” he replied with a gravid frown. Whatever it was, Thace did not appear confident.

Unease rippled in his gut. “Altean?”

The Galran nodded morosely. “They normally don’t have a heavy presence in the Gryfe sector, but it is currently…erratic. I must take further note of it.” Thace sighed, showing the strain of this war for a fraction of a moment. “There’s nothing more I can converge over comms, I’m afraid. I’ll report in full when I return.”

Shiro dipped his head at the commander, a sign of their ending transmission. He bore one fist over his heart—a customary gesture of the Galra that served as their salute. “ _Mrodá vu_.” The Galra tongue might always weigh heavy on his lips, but Shiro had picked up the language nonetheless. The Galra parting salute was perhaps one of the first things he had learned. It had not a precise translation to English, but Shiro had a very good idea of what it meant: _may you return favorable._

Thace placed his fist over his heart in return. “I will be—” He cut himself off suddenly, whipping around to look at something Shiro couldn’t see; he thought he heard some kind of alarm through the comm.

“Thace? Is there something wrong? Tha—!”

The transmission died. A black screen mocked him in the feed’s stead. Sure, they had been finished with the check-in, but the way it ended so abruptly… The hairs on Shiro’s neck stood on end; he didn’t need a vell’s intrinsic sense of danger to know something was wrong.

He tried to hail Thace’s ship again, just to be sure. Nothing. And then the console’s connection to the ship died altogether, leaving nothing but a blinking red light that single-handedly plunged Shiro’s unease into cold hard dread.

They had lost men before. Shiro remembers the first time it happened when he was a lieutenant; an Altean vessel had come dangerously close to a settlement of Galra on Junga, and two Blades went to lure the Alteans away: they lost connection to them quickly. And the worst part was, Shiro had been powerless. He himself was three sectors away, and the Alteans… Shiro had wanted with every fiber of his being to go after them, but it was useless; to send anyone after the dead was a suicide mission. It wasn’t that the Galra didn’t value their men. But if the situation was too dire, they would not send anyone else if there was a chance they would be compromised too.

It was the worst part about war. Shiro hated— _hated—_ having to stand by and leave any Blade or Galra or _person_ to their deaths, but he understood. The Galra were not many; they could not afford suicide missions, even if there _was_ a chance of rescue.

So, Shiro knows precisely what Kolivan would say when he hurriedly called him to inform the Blade Captain what had happened:

“We can’t risk it.” Kolivan frowned deeply. Shiro knew him well enough to know that the captain was torn up about this, but he was as stubborn as ever.

“This is _Thace_ , Captain; we can’t do nothing!”

And it wasn’t just because it was the man that Shiro considered family, the one that helped anybody just because it was the right thing to do, the one that everyone considered a friend, confided in… Thace was invaluable for more reasons. He alone knew more about enemy operations than anyone else. And it wouldn’t just be the Galra losing him—it would be the Alteans gaining what he knew. That was, perhaps, more dangerous than sending anybody after him.

It wasn’t the only reason that had Shiro on edge. Aside from his knowledge, and his own relationship with Shiro, it was Keith that worried him the most. Shiro knew Keith, and he knew that the second he found out his uncle was missing, he would go to the ends of the universe to rescue him. And that would be the moment things would jump off the diving board from _worse_ to _catastrophic._

Kolivan seemed to realize at least some of this as well. “I’ll be back to base as soon as I can. We’ll discuss this with the Table…except don’t tell—”

“I know,” Shiro cut in quietly.

_Don’t tell Keith._

Shiro didn’t want to have to keep things from Keith, but if it meant keeping him from doing something brash and jeopardizing his own life _and_ possibly Voltron, then Shiro would entertain the secrecy for now.

—o0o—

“Are you certain of this?” Kala demanded. For a moment, Shiro regretted going to Kala first; _of course,_ she would have trouble taking him seriously. The strategist was not particularly fond of him, he was pretty sure, but she was also best equipped to handle how they might go about this mess. Before they had to break the news to Zarkon, that is…

But as Shiro faced Kala, noticing her ticking jaw, her tighter-than-normal disposition. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him; it was that she didn’t _want_ to. Shiro understood.

Thace was the kind of guy that everyone couldn’t help but to feel comfortable around. He was considerate and easy-going in conversation, and firm in his belief that they should do anything in their power to help their people. Many even considered a _friend._

Kala might have too.

“He activated Protocol: Deigma, Kala.” The words were hard to force out, but Shiro spoke them in quiet clarity.

Kala looked away with a clench of her fists. “Then there is nothing we can do.”

Shiro clenched his jaw. Protocol: Deigma was a last resort kind of plan that was never used lightly. In the event of compromise, the protocol would destroy any hard drive or device that may include sensitive information. Generally, its use dictated a no-win scenario. It was the Galra’s cyanide.

Thace had activated it, moments after their transmission died; it was the last signal sent to the home-base console before…

It could very well mean that Thace was dead. Kala knew that. Kolivan knew that. Shiro didn’t want to.

“He could have survived.” Thace was a formidable fighter—and so were the Blades that accompanied him. Shiro doubted that Reina or Lycon or even Junvvi would go down without one hell of a fight. Thace was paranoid; he would have invoked the protocol at the first sign of danger—but none of them would lay down to it. “We could be dooming them to _die_ with our inaction!”

“Or we could doom more!” Kala growled, whipping around to face him with blazing eyes. Her yellow sclera was intense in the dim lighting of their meeting room, the Galra’s natural night vision causing it to consume the iris like a wolf in the night. On Kala’s already blazing face, it reminded Shiro just how dangerous the woman could be. But he stood his ground, not even flinching.

“And what if Thace was captured? Interrogated? How many more would die then if that witch pried open his mind?” Shiro hissed. He knew what the Alteans were capable of. He knew too well.

Kala’s stance dropped minutely with a flare of the nostrils before she set her gaze elsewhere. After a tense moment of silence, she exhaled loudly. “The Red Lion.”

What? “Excuse me?”

“If the Alteans wanted to kill them, they would have shot down the ship. Thace wouldn’t have needed to activate the protocol.” Shiro felt a little lost, but it was evident that Kala was thinking. She tore away from their terse showdown and slowly paced the room, arms folding behind her. “They have only wanted to kill us since the dawn of their empire—but that was before Alfor knew that the Red Lion had found a Galra pilot.”

 _Oh._ “They’re leverage?”

Kala nodded solemnly.

Shiro released a long, shaky breath. He had been worried about Keith doing something reckless, because this was _Thace_ , but he never imagined that that might be the Altean’s goal. It made sense, now that Kala had pointed out the strategic benefit. But the Alteans had no way of knowing the Thace was related to Keith, or that Keith was even the Red Paladin. No, they were just targeting them in hopes that it would draw them out.

If Kala was right—and he would begrudgingly admit that the tactician was rarely wrong—then the Alteans would keep targeting like them like this, relentlessly, until the Red Lion was theirs. “Quiznak.”

“We must inform the Chief,” Kala declared. “Immediately.”

—o0o—

“Shiro? Is something wrong?”

Shiro silently cursed in every language he knew—which was a lot, at this point. After two vargas of arguing, the Table—sans Keith and Thace, for obvious reasons—had come to a tentative consensus. Zarkon allowed for a small convoy to appraise the situation, and search for survivors at the ship’s last known location. Or proof of death. At the slightest sign of danger, or a trap, they were to leave. But if there was a chance that Thace or any of the others was still alive, they would pursue it—with caution.

There wasn’t full support of the plan; some wanted more caution, some more action. Everyone, however, was in perfect agreement of one thing: don’t tell Keith.

Which made lying to his face all the more difficult. “Why would you think that?” Shiro responded, forcing his voice to be smooth. He could already see that crinkle of concern in Keith’s brow. God, he was a terrible person. He had sworn that he would take Keith seriously, that he would lie or break his trust and look at what he was doing now!

Even breaths; don’t panic.

“Because you look ready to bowl down anybody in your path,” Keith shot back, brow furrowed in confoundment.

Shiro was on his way to gather a team and lead the convoy to Thace’s last known location—but Keith didn’t need to know that. “It’s nothing. I was just headed off for some training.”

Keith stared at him for long, hard moment. “Then why did you look so upset?”

Damnit, Keith! Of all the times for him to not let this go… “I’m fine,” Shiro tried to assure.

Instantly, Keith’s face hardened, ears tilted back. “You’re lying.”

“Wha— Keith, everything’s fine, really, I just—”

The younger man took a step closer to him. “Stop it, Shiro! I know you’re lying to me,” he growled. “You thought I wouldn’t notice? That every single damn time you say you’re ‘ _fine_ ’ that you lie through your teeth?” Something hot and wet burned in Keith’s sclera.

Shiro took a step back. “Keith, listen—”

“No, I’m not finished. I just came back from the hangars—” _Quiznak._ “—and the Blades are preparing for something, so don’t you _dare_ tell me you’re training! And ever since I _saved_ the Manheim mission, all anyone’s done—including _you_ —is keep me here and in the dark!”

This was it. Keith had backed him into a corner, because he was _right._ And staring into Keith’s desperate and angry violet eyes, Shiro couldn’t muster up another lie—or anything for that matter. He didn’t want to break Keith’s trust…but he also didn’t want him getting hurt. Keith had already done so much for Shiro, gone through so much danger, when it was supposed to be _Shiro’s_ job to protect _him._ And he knew Keith too well. He would _not_ sit by if Thace was in danger; not even if Zarkon himself told him to.

“I have to go,” he replied quietly. Turning his back on Keith’s look of despair hurt him more than anything the Alteans did, but he had to do it. Shiro wouldn’t let Keith fly himself into a trap. He silently promised himself that he would tell Keith the truth when he got back. Hopefully then, it wouldn’t be too late.

 

 

 

“Lieutenant?”

Shiro turned around from his spot at the controls. They had just returned from Thace’s last known, but with little to show from it…but some wreckage… No proof of life or death. _Nothing._

Vyyra approached him solemnly. “We just got word back from base—Keith is gone. And…so is the Red Lion.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeeeey.... So it's been a little longer between updates this go around then it has been in the past. Whoops. I tried not to limit myself by creating a posting schedule. However, it is a tentative/unspoken goal of mine to post at least twice a month. (So, roughly once every two weeks.) If that makes any of y'all feel better.
> 
> So who thought it was Shiro that was captured? Anybody? Hands? Well you were wrong! I wasn't _that_ mean to him.......yet. On the other hand, anybody guess it was Thace? 
> 
> Whelp, the Galra have some fun times ahead of them. There's some major crap about to go down in the next few chapters; this is going to be fun for _me_ at least!
> 
> Post them questions, comments, and thoughts down below! Just hearing from you guys really does make me want to write more, and ergo faster. Until next time!


	7. And the Battle Rages On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Altean and the Galra fight to reclaim what was theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, uh... It's been a month. Whoops. But hey, it's a long chapter! And an important one... Mweheheh. 
> 
> Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a certain six-episode-date with Netflix. *pterodactyl screeches*

_"O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain..."_

\- Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"

* * *

 

Keith tightened his grip on Red’s control, trying to anchor himself.

Thace had been captured, and not a single person thought to mention that to _him,_ Thace’s only surviving relative. No, instead they avoided him, and lied to his face— _Shiro_ lied to his face.

He wasn’t a child, he was the damn Red Paladin! He couldn’t handle himself, and he _would_ rescue Thace with or without the GRC’s help.

He just had to find him first.

If Keith took the time to stop being angry, and be rational, he might have admitted that he took off with little clue as to what actually happened—just the source of Thace’s last transmission. Beyond that, nothing. But he had the Red Lion, and that was good enough for him at the moment. They flew over the planetoid, any trace of Thace’s cruiser gone. Either the Alteans took the entire thing, or some scouts had been here first to clean it up.

He released an angry shout as he pounded the console. This was ridiculous! If he had been told earlier, then maybe Keith would have actually had a chance at a good lead. Instead, the Galra’s paranoia may have just as well cost him his uncle.

Maybe… maybe this was why his mom never went back. Never really talked about them. From what Keith remembered of her, she had been content to stay on Earth. He used to think that it was because she cared about him and his dad, but hindsight only seemed to disprove that one; she left them anyways. Now, Keith wonders if she just wanted to get away from _this._ It made sense.

It’s not that Keith hated them—the Galra were still good people. But obstinate, paranoid, and secretive people that would sooner abandon their own before risking anything. And Keith couldn’t stand by and let them do this—not this time.

 _Look._ A prompting cut through his thoughts like a warm knife, breaking through to him. At Red’s insistence, Keith fixed his gaze to the radar that she emphasized to him: a single blinking dot cut through his range of detection. And not just any ship—an Altean one.

Keith allowed himself a satisfied smile, determination filling his veins. This was exactly what he needed. The Red Lion’s range was superior to any basic ship—certainly more than what appeared to be some basic Altean cruiser. Keith could easily tail it; and, hopefully, it’ll lead him to what he wanted.

Whether or not Thace would be wherever Keith ended up was a moot point, because if Keith got his hands on an Altean, he’ll find him. One way or another, Keith will find him.

—o0o—

_“The Red Lion has caught onto my scout’s scent. It’ll be at our doorstep in thirty dobashes, sister.”_

It had been their routine to file onto the bridge post-mission and report to Allura. Pidge wasn’t sure what exact purpose it served—aside from formality, that is—because she was always fairly certain that Allura knew the gist of what they did. She was the one to send them on their missions, after all. But, Pidge supposed it made things…official, or what-not.

Regardless, it was not abnormal for their merry little paladin trio to have to stand off to the side and wait for the princess to finish whatever task she busied herself with, while twiddling their thumbs like little peons. Honestly, Pidge would have thought that they should have enough clout to be pushed up in Allura’s ever-so-busy schedule. She hated waiting.

Sometimes, Pidge would take the time to formulate her report to be as succinct as possible, so they could leave sooner; other times, she might just watch the activities of the bridge. Altean technology certainly was fascinating. She knew that everything was stream-lined to run through their own power sources—something energy-based, most likely—but she would love to know _how._

Allura had been having a conversation with someone through the large monitor, but Pidge hadn’t been paying precise attention to it. The words of the man registered only after a delay.

Lance must have caught onto the significance sooner than either Pidge or Hunk, because he was already marching forward. “Wait, wait, _wait,_ since when were we setting a trap for the _Red Lion?_ ” he questioned loudly, making the ‘time-out’ motion with his hands. “Isn’t that lion, I don’t know, piloted by a _Galran_ right now? Were we told about this? I feel like we should’ve been told about this.”

The princess and the man on the screen both whipped around to glare at them in varying degrees of intensity. But they had no right. No, Lance was correct—wow, that was a weird thing to say… They should have been _told about this._

Allura rounded on Lance quickly in response. Her hair looked to be disheveled and there was a heaviness underneath her eyes, but she didn’t fail to look fiery as she drew herself to her full height—shoulders pushed back regally—with her cerulean eyes fixed on him. “It is not your place to interrupt this, paladin,” the princess retorted coolly—coldly, even.

“No, but it _is,_ ” Pidge retorted on Lance’s behalf, stepping forward beside him. It was only logical that the paladins should be involved in the affairs of the _quiznacking RED LION!_ “ _We_ are the paladins, and if you’re trying to take _down_ a lion, you need us.”

Of course, their apparent plan to snatch the Red Lion was another matter entirely. She could understand their urgency to obtain the Red Lion after they figured out that it was currently being piloted by the Galra, but it had only been a few weeks since that discovery. And from what she had gathered, Pidge had a good idea of just how slippery the Galra could be; so the question was, just how half-baked was this ambitious plan of theirs? Because even disregarding the Galra themselves, the Red Lion proved to be just as powerful even when piloted by a Galran. Pidge hated to admit it, but that guy wiped the floor with them last time they met. Of course, she would also chalk _that_ up to being unprepared to fight another lion.

The man on the screen decided to add his two cents to the matter as well. _“You dare question your superiors?”_ he seethed. Pidge recognized him from her search through the databases, and from his one visit to the Castle of Lions. It was hard to forget a contemptuous scowl like that. But his name…

“Ah, Commander Aldus, buddy!” Lance replied cheerfully, evidently recognizing him as well. (And remembering a trifle such as his name.) Of course: Allura’s brother and the commander of one of the royal fleets.

Aldus sneered at Lance. _“You will treat me with respect,_ paladin. _Now—”_

“Brother, they are not wrong,” Allura relented. Pidge blinked; huh, that was quicker than she expected. Alteans could be just as stubborn as humans, in her experience—and that was saying something. “The paladins are crucial to our success.”

 _“’Crucial’ is a strong word, but…I will accept it,”_ Aldus relented. Pidge could see enough of him on the screen to see his arms crossed. Pleased, he was not. _“And just what, pray-tell, are you going to do in this extremely delicate operation?”_ the crown-prince derisively asked, directing his gaze to the paladins.

It was Pidge’s turn to glare. “Well, that would be an easier question if you told us what your precious plan _was_.” Honestly, they treated the paladins like _children_ sometimes; it was humiliating. Just because humans hadn’t known anyone else existed in space—an understandably embarrassing fact, in hindsight—didn’t mean that all of them were backward simpletons unable to comprehend the most basic of strategies. And Pidge had done copious amounts of research on their history, too, and she was proud to say that humans had evolved much faster than Alteans in terms of scientific endeavors, so _ha._ (But that was neither here nor there at the moment.)

The commander stayed silent for a long moment. _“Hmph. I was getting to that,”_ Aldus countered finally. It was probably a lie through his teeth, but if it worked, it worked. _“I have drawn the Red Paladin to our location; once he enters our airspace, I have a fleet ready to surround him—and plenty of troops ready if his rat-buddies join in. If we draw the Red Lion close enough to my starship, then I can draw it in with my beam.”_

Either the plan was as half-baked as Lance’s usual repertoire, or they weren’t telling them the full story; Pidge was willing to put money on the latter. She felt the compulsion to call him out on it, but she forced herself to swallow it down. This wasn’t Iverson. And, the stakes were higher. As much as Pidge loathed pompous twits like Aldus, he was only a smaller piece in this; they had to look at the larger picture. The Galra really did have the Red Lion, and that _was_ a bad thing. So for the sake of the greater good, Pidge would swallow this _once._

“Well, somehow I doubt your fleet can hold its own against a Lion of Voltron,” Pidge drawled. She couldn’t help the drip of sarcasm that accompanied her retort. “There’ll be less collateral if you let us handle the Red Lion.”

Aldus stared at them for a long moment, the wheels visibly turning behind his icicle eyes. Insufferable though he was, he wasn’t dumb—so he knew she was right. The lions were the best thing to take a hit from another lion, and they would need to get in close to corner the Red Lion once it arrived on the scene.

 _“Hmph. Fine,”_ he relented. _“But I expect the best of the Paladins of Voltron.”_

—o0o—

“We’re closing in on his coordinates. Sensors show a planetoid base in the area.”

 _“That’s probably where they’re holding our men,”_ Mavre surmised. Shiro was occupied with the controls of his own cruiser, but he could see Mavre flit around the command console through the screen. He was just a kid, really, but was handling point well—the rest of their forces were already scattered to the cosmic winds for their recovery ambush.

Chief Zarkon was able to sense the location of the Red Lion after a moment in the Black Lion’s hangar, and from there, it was just a matter of getting to him. The idea of avoiding conflict had been erased long ago. Now, it was just the matter of protecting their own.

“There’s also a considerable amount of air support,” Vyyra added from the communication’s chair. “We’re looking at up to a hundred fighters at moment of contact.”

 _“Only a hundred?”_ Mavre murmured in confoundment.

“Probably necessary to trick Keith’s sensors,” Shiro responded. Mavre was not a Blade recruit, but instead in training to be a point-man for a colony, but Shiro felt it appropriate to give the kid his own pointers. “Better for us, anyways. But we also have to assume the other Voltron lions will be present.”

“Whatever. We’ll be ready for them,” Callik declared, cracking his knuckles. He was young—probably Shiro’s equivalent, but Shiro often felt older than his age—and a confident individual. Cocky, yes, but Shiro knew that he did have skill to back it up. Callik and Vyyra were both on the vanguard force with Shiro. He and Kolivan were leading different waves of Blades to storm the base; Shiro would lead the first to engage, and Kolivan’s squad would extract their men and Thace. While their job wasn’t easy in any sense of the word, they weren’t going to have to face any of the air support—including the lions—which was probably why Callik could be nonchalant about it.

Because truth of the matter was, this was going to be tough. And Keith… Well, Keith had handled the three Altean lions the first time, but Shiro hated to think of him in that position again—with more stakes on the line, nonetheless. He really didn’t want to see just how much damage the Red Lion could take before…

If they got through this in one piece, Shiro was going to tear Keith a new one for making him worry this much.

“We’re nearing approach, Mavre,” Shiro stated, pulling himself and the conversation back to the immediate problem. “We clear?”

_“Prorok’s air fleet in his position for cover. And Kolivan is right behind… You’re clear, Lieutenant.”_

Shiro rolled his neck and stood, pulling his cowl overhead. “Vyyra, take the wheel and provide close-range support; drop us off on the ground and proceed to safe air space to take on the weapons system.” The signal from Prorok’s small defense fleet flashed; they were moving. “Move in!”

This was it. It was last minute and controversial, but in the end, the Galra protected their own; the counter ambush wasn’t perfect, but it was more than he was sure the Alteans would suspect.

One way or another, they were bringing their guys home.

—o0o—

Lance had always been a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of guy, but that didn’t mean he was glad when plans went _ka-boom_.

And _ka-boom_ they went. Lance could only gape as dozens of Galra ships sped overhead, dropping soldiers to the ground. They had known the possibility that more Galra would accompany the Red Lion, but… This was an invasion.

Lance sprinted out to the courtyard, drawn there by the cataclysm that commenced. They had arrived at Aldus’ planet-side base—though Lance wasn’t entirely sure the tiny thing could be called a planet, atmosphere though it had—to implement the trap that had been laid. The base was a sentry outpost, equipped with the ‘best defenses in the quadrant’ so Allura and Aldus had done their base to ensure that the take-down would happen there. Not to mention the base’s tractor beam was the most suitable for dragging down a lion.

But before he could even get to his lion, the Galra attacked in numbers not predicted. They flew into the airspace in droves, overwhelming the skies and the grounds with their speed and maneuverability. Shouts of battle arose from the front of the base, where a hoard of faceless Galra troops stormed the front.

Lance willed his bayard to life and took point. The Galra, given their larger stance and flexible feet, were swift and agile, making them hard targets—but he had to give the guards some cover.

A Galran, armed with a broad sword, overwhelmed one of the guards, who fell with a cry and a flash of cerulean blood. Without thinking, Lance dropped down to face the Galran, just barely blocking his preemptive blow with his shield.

He realized then, that this Galran was smaller than most—only a little taller than him—and for a moment, Lance thought he was evenly matched.

A blur of violet, and the Galran’s non-sword arm was crashing into his armor with startling clarity. Lance dropped, rolling out of the blow, but he could still feel the heat of the glowing claw that attacked him. “Woah!” Lance shot at the attacker—a futile attempt from this close—and only succeeded in giving himself time to scramble out of the way as the shot bounced off his sword.

But the Galra recovered quickly. It was terrifying to witness the sword bare down on him, the three soulless eyes of the cowled figure unblinking. Faceless. It was impossible to tell just _what_ Galran was underneath their armor, and Lance wasn’t sure he wanted to. The Galran’s large sword bore down on him, and even though his shield saved him from nasty things like decapitation, the weight of the blow made him unable to do anything else.

 _Wait, that was it!_ Lance shoved his shield to the side, throwing the Galran off balance by his own unwieldy weapon. “Ha! Think of that before you choose a…” _Bigger weapon_. The sword elongated itself further, now a neat spear with a thin blade, and the speed of the Galran once more became evident.

Lance fired three shots in rapid succession, praying that the rampaging beast would stop, but each of the shots were deflected by _their arm._ Just _what_ was this thing?! He yelped as it closed the distance between them. The blazing forearm crashed into his chest armor, searing it and knocking the wind out of its totally _not_ terrified paladin. The spear head dove towards his head, and Lance narrowly avoided being skewered.

This was _bad._

Desperate, Lance kicked the attacker in what he hoped to be a Galran’s man-parts while simultaneously hoping that the Galran was, indeed, a dude to suffer from the blow. Luckily, it worked long enough for Lance to head-butt the Galra off of him, extremely glad that he had a nifty helmet that came with his paladin armor.

Scrambling to his feet, Lance had underestimated his opponent’s response-time, and was suddenly faced with a spear flying for his face.

“Paladin!” A figure jumped in front of him, deflecting the spear with their own. Lance could only stare as Princess Allura, clad in armor, attacked the Galran with her own spear. “Go!” she hissed.

It felt like he was wading through a dream, unable to fully grasp his surroundings as reality and join them as such. The cacophony of violence and anger and chaos filled the air in a palpable onslaught, overwhelming Lance. This was not the same decisive thrill that accompanied him when he was in the Blue Lion; this was not the disconnected conflict he experienced when fighting mindless monsters; this was war.

Lance ran. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Galran fight the Altean princess. They intertwined themselves in a deadly dance, Allura doing everything in her power to stop the Galran from proceeded while they tried to tear her throat out. The Galran had somehow regained their weapon, and the spears of the duo clashed at the shaft.

Three Galra soldiers broke the barrier, diving into the establishment; soon, it seemed that they were all overrun.

He thinks he can hear voices in his comm, but he can’t distinguish it above the roar of gunfire. Lance somehow found himself trading shots with another Galra sniper, as he took what little cover he could find; it was difficult to stop the barrage of Galra when he, too, was being shot out.

The sky overhead was shrouded in fire. White Altean fighters were assuaged by dark Galra speeders, who cut through the air like lightning. Lasers, both blue and purple, clashed amongst each other and the booming resonance they created thundered near permanently. Like a blight, the Red Lion flew through the madness, twisting through the other lions and Altean fire.

 _“—ance!_ Lance!” Hunk’s voice finally tore through his attention.

“Hunk?” he managed. “What’s—?”

 _“Lance, where the hell are you?! The Red Lion has us scrambled! We need the Blue Lion’s help!”_ Pidge cut in, a panicked edge to her voice.

“I’m on the ground. The base—” Lance grunted as a shot hit in his shoulder; luckily, the armor took the brunt of it, but he knew that that would hurt like hell once the pain registered to his addled mind. “—is being overrun!”

 _“So are we! We need to get the Red Lion to stop this,”_ Hunk prattled shakily. _“We need you, Lance!”_

Lance risked another glance upwards, feeling guilt and dread do summersaults in his belly. He wasn’t some melee fighter—not like this; he was the damn Blue Paladin! And right now, his friends needed him; Voltron needed him. “I’m on my way—gonna try and forge a path.” Lance fired another shot at the sniper.

“Hey!” he waved down some guards also trying to fire upon the onslaught, just on the other side of the crumbled wall. “Give me some cover!”

The two nodded, and Lance was able to scramble out of the way and make a run from the base. He just needed to get to the Castle, and get to the Blue Lion. Nice and simple.

Except, of course, it couldn’t be. He rounded the corner, hoping to circumvent the battle for the base by entering around the back; apparently, four Galra had the same exit plan. In their haste, they didn’t seem to see him at first—until they nearly collided.

Lance had his blaster out in seconds, nerves steeled to fight his way through them. It felt cowardly, to avoid so much fighting back in the front and only fight to get away—not take down the enemy—but he needed to get to the Blue Lion.

“Don’t shoot!”

It was the first time one spoke to him, and as Lance’s gaze focused, he realized that this Galra had no cowl. She had lavender fur and fox-like ears pinned to the back of her head.

Only one person in the group was masked; a smooth-skinned burgundy male limped heavily, his face covered in pale orange blood from a cut to the face; the masked Galran held a limp body—a young-looking violet male with all the color drained from him. A corpse.

They were removing the dead and injured from…the inside?

Realization dawned on Lance like a sickness that made itself known.

It was how they lured the Red Lion here. It was why the Galra attacked with a ferocity they don’t usually exhibit. It wasn’t an invasion—it was a rescue mission.

“Please, I’m a non-combatant—a doctor!” The woman pleaded with him, silent fear in her placid resolve. “Don’t shoot.”

Lance lowered his bayard wordlessly, and ran past them. He tried not to look back.

—o0o—

“Status?”

“Everyone is accounted for. But seven ships down are down…” The young cadet’s voice wavered. “But twenty injured, two dead…”

_“More Altean ships have arrived!”_

_“Quiznak, take down that warship!”_

“Pull out!”

_“Commander, we’re surrounded!”_

_“The Blue Lion has been spotted; I repeat, the Blue Lion has engaged.”_

_“Keith, dammit, pull out!”_

“ _Ugh!_ Take out the base’s weapons and _pull out._ ”

_“Ship down! Ship down!”_

“Get everyone to the ships!”

The Galra command was in chaos. The lieutenants were enthralled in the fight; the fighters were panicked; his Commander and his tactician, from the base, were more so panicked; the cadet left to run point appeared ready to pass out.

Zarkon could not bear to watch it unfold like this any longer.

“Chief! Where are you going?” Sendak yipped as he swept out of the command room.

He knew his commander meant well, with his worry—he could also hear Kala, having correctly guessed his intention, loudly informing him that it was a bad idea. But Zarkon knew what he was doing.

His bodily strength had failed him over the millennia, yes. The great age forced upon him by Alfor’s wayward attempt to kill him, all those years ago, had been a cruel mistress, but Zarkon would use his continued existence to his advantage.

He would not hide here while his people died.

“Hello, old friend.”

The Black Lion stood in her vigil, but sensing Zarkon’s need, she lowered her jaw. The pilot’s chair, unused for many a year, felt as familiar as his own mind.

The former Head of Voltron tore out of the chamber and through the barrier of the space pocket in the blink of an eye. Zarkon could feel his body strain, could feel the lion’s worry for him. She wanted to save him; he wanted to save them; they wanted justice.

It was a bittersweet gift, and a lucky curse, that caused Zarkon to transcend Death. Alfor had meant to take away his soul, and instead, the Black Lion intervened and his quintessence was entangled in hers forever; he would spend an eternity with his _jemisha_ , yet to fly her—to fight alongside her—would threaten to overwhelm what was left of his quintessence.

But some things had to be worth the risk.

His body could hardly hold the strain that flying with a lion of Voltron presented, but they arrived at the battle, wings spread in the coming of the queen, Zarkon paid no mind to himself; only them.

They tore through the Altean line, scattering the vessels of the barricade that contained his people to the sky as they fell apart at the hands of their jawblade and wings of death. For a moment, it was as if the battlefield stood still—a pause as they regarded with awe and terror as what would be their destruction.

He could feel the Lions of Voltron still in their head sister’s presence, and the Black Lion roared. The lions ensnared by the Alteans cried, and he could feel the Black Lion rage at their condition.

“Keith. The base.” The Red Lion was best suited to fire upon the defenses. Zarkon ended the communication as soon as he started it, not bothering with the young paladin’s response; the Red Lion peeling off to do as asked was response enough.

Zarkon surmised that the paladins of the other three lions tried to fire upon them, but it was a futile effort. What they did manage to fire was pitiful, and easy for Zarkon to evade; the lions, however, did not wish to attack their sister.

He could feel it, burning in his fragile body—Voltron. She longed to be whole again, and for the first time in centuries, they were close enough. But at the same time, they weren’t. Zarkon had no part in the Voltron before him, just beyond his fingertips on the other side of a haze. It was there, nearly complete, but it was not his.

_But who…?_

As they cut through more Altean fighters, Zarkon took a moment to survey the ground. Despite Kala’s warning to get inside the crafts, it appeared many Blade of Marmora soldiers were unable, still entangled in the fight. The human lieutenant—Shiro—stands out in the chaos, holding off the Alteans with a spear and his weaponized arm while ushering the Blades back to their ships.

**_Him._ **

It’s clear why the Black Lion would choose him. He is noble and strong, and _he_ fits into Voltron.

Zarkon felt a wistful smile grace his scarred lip; Voltron would return.

With the extra power he had supplied, his people had regained a handle on the situation; they began to enter hyperspace and exit the premises, the Blades on the ground finally in the air. They were done here.

He and the Black Lion zoomed away, back to the base they had to call home. Their victory tinged itself in sadness, the weight of sacrifice evident to the veterans. They did not need words to commune between each other, their intentions and feelings clear like some palpable yet invisible thing. It was with a heavy soul they returned, and they both knew that that would be the last time they would fly together.

_Goodbye, old friend. **It has been an honor.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully, season 4 will light that fire under me and the next chapter will be up sooner this time! But, uh, if a bunch of oneshots--or, heaven forbid, other stories pop up--just blame the all-my-favorite-shows-are-premiering-new-seasons month of October. 
> 
> Now seriously, Imma go watch season 4 right now.


	8. Carry On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You take your victories, and your losses, and you carry on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a short chapter, and not terribly exciting, but an important development nonetheless.

_"We'll carry on_   
_And though you're dead and gone believe me_   
_Your memory will carry on_   
_We'll carry on_   
_And though you're broken and defeated_   
_Your weary widow marches on..."_

\- My Chemical Romance, "Welcome to the Black Parade"

* * *

 

Junvii and Nrrt were sent off at Wake. Byron had recovered Junvii’s body, and managed to keep up with in throughout their capture; he had died in the Altean cell, bleeding out from shrapnel. Nrrt had been air support during the attack, but was shot down by an Altean beam; there was no time or point in trying to obtain his corpse from the mangled wreck, so they simply burned his bedsheets to represent him.

Junvii’s sister and Nrrt’s bunkmate, Ornu, spoke the blessings over their fallen’s ashes, and preformed the honors of scattering them among the stars, to be with Daibaazal and the rest of the fallen in their death.

For the breakfast meal, Vyyra returned to the kitchen and cooked _hrrga_ (pancakes) with _ayr_ (some kind of drink, like a dairy) because it was Junvii’s and Nrrt’s favorite respectively. The time was spent sharing the highlights of their life.

Keith hadn’t really known either one of them, so he sat to the side and watched. Shiro was currently tag-teaming with Uriah in orating Junvii’s first official day of Blade training, where he had somehow managed to set fire to a dummy and Uriah in one fell swoop. Kolivan’s face had turned so dark he had been the color of Kala, according to a very amused (in hindsight, of course) Uriah.

“It’s not your fault.”

Keith’s ears swiveled around as Thace appeared at his side, sitting down beside him. “What isn’t? Junvii being killed, or Nrrt dying because he came after me,” he shot back, voice soured. The entire ordeal was difficult and unpleasant. The Alteans were despicable beings that thought it was acceptable to capture and slaughter them as they saw fit; the Galra had been too hesitant to confront them, even going as far as to try to keep Keith from knowing; they went anyway, and people were hurt—even killed—in the result.

There was no easy answer. If Keith hadn’t have gone, Thace and his entire team would be dead; since he did go, Nrrt was dead and many were injured.

“Look,” Thace sighed. The lines of his face were haggard, his eyes tight. Keith couldn’t _not_ notice the sling keeping his arm close to his chest. “I know that things are bad. And it might always be that way, so we have to take our victories where we can.” He placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder and smiled. “Thank you. I haven’t gotten a chance to tell you that, since yesterday, but you came for us.” He shot a Keith a stern look. “Even if you shouldn’t have.”

He felt his face flush at the praise, even when it was tinged with Thace’s usual criticism. “Of course I would,” Keith muttered. How could he not?

Thace responded by ruffling Keith’s hair, and even though he found it supremely awkward and embarrassing, he let his uncle finish. “You’re a good kid.”

“When he isn’t running headlong into trouble.” Shiro sat next to him with glint in his eye, having apparently left the general conversation to join him. Immediately following their return home, Shiro had accosted him about the dangers of running off, apologized profusely for lying, hugged him, and then yelled some more. Now, he was just rubbing it in.

Keith deadpanned. “I _get it_ ,” he groaned. Shiro ruffled his hair as well with a laugh, and Keith briefly wondered why he was so adamant about keeping these two mother-hens around, though that wasn’t really a question.

He knew why they were hovering so close, though—Keith worried them. Which wasn’t fair—because how many times had _they_ worried _him_?—but… he couldn’t deny that the sentiment was almost…nice. It made Keith take the time to appreciate what—who—he had.

And that was the only reason that Keith might have felt guilty for leaving. _“We care about you, too, Keith,”_ Shiro had quietly told him. _“Think about that before you do something reckless. Please.”_ Keith had lost—and come close to losing—the people he considered family so many times, that he rarely thought about how they felt. It was easier to understand Red’s feelings, because they were so much like his own, but when someone might have been feeling that way about _him_? It was harder to fathom that they might need him as much as he needed them.

But thanks to Shiro and Thace, he was starting to.

“Hey!” Someone cleared their voice loudly, and the dining hall fell silent. Junvii’s sister—Haigra—stood on the table, drink in hand. Mealtime was coming to a close, and so was the gathering. There was still work to be done.

She raised her glass, tears still in her eyes. “ _Ri voi.”_

The mass of Galra soldiers dutifully raised their glasses in return. “ _Ri voi!_ ”

To life.

—o0o—

Hunk fidgeted. “How many?”

“Fourteen.” Pidge pushed her glasses higher onto her face, gaze cast downward. “They incinerated their remains this morning.”

The paladins remained silent, heavy by the loss of fourteen individuals who they did not know. Hunk didn’t know their names, their stories, their dreams—only that the Galra had killed them.

Pidge had happened across the information earlier; how, Hunk wasn’t sure, but he has learned not to severely question half the things Pidge does when unsupervised with a computer. Apparently, not believing in funerals, the Alteans had them quietly released to the cold confines of space that morning.

It angered Hunk that people would kill each other like that—with no regard for their families, their lives. General Aldus started it, with that risky plan to lure the damn Galra right to them, and that worked all too well; but the Galra sure didn’t seem to hold back.

Hunk _knows_ that they are at “war” but he still doesn’t believe it could blindly justify death like that.

“There’s more,” Pidge added, switching her gaze back to the screen. “I’ve been doing some digging, and… I think I’ve figured out why the Galra have two lions.”

That was the other thing: the Black Lion. Hunk knew that the Red Lion was being piloted—and by someone good at it, too—but the sudden arrival of the Black Lion had him shook in a way he didn’t know was possible. For one, the thing was _huge._ The massive beast made even the Yellow Lion look small, and it took down a wing of a fleet without any resistance. Secondly, it was the fact that they couldn’t do a single thing about it.

Hunk could feel it—his lion wouldn’t move. It was almost like he was feeling what it was feeling, and it was overwhelming and frankly frightening and…sad? Hunk wasn’t sure how much of the tumultuous emotion he felt was brought on by awe and fear, but there was definitely something. And with all five lions in the same air-space… Hunk couldn’t place the feeling, but it was strong and right and terribly, terribly wrong at the same time.

And, there was, the fact that the _Black Lion also had a Galra pilot._

“And how’s that?”

Pidge pulled up a few grainy pictures. One had five paladins posing together. “See the Black Paladin right there? That’s a Galran.”

“Woah…” Hunk could see it (fairly) clearly for himself, and that was just…wow. “So the Galra have piloted a Voltron lion before? I thought this was an Altean thing.”

“See, that’s the thing,” Pidge replied, shaking her head. “That’s what the history reports and everybody makes it sound like, but based on these _really old_ files, it looks like it was some sort of multi-planet thing.”

“Huh.” Hunk wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Did the Alteans just… _lie_ to them? Or was there more to the story? Maybe this was just some misunderstanding…

There were just so many missing pieces. Hunk didn’t want to have to distrust the Alteans, but it didn’t seem that they trusted _them_ with information that looked pretty pertinent. He could understand their reluctance to trust a trio of strangers, but it still hurt that after they proved how willing they were to help, that the Alteans were still holding back. It had to be hurtful, yes, to admit that they had evidently been betrayed on the matter involving Voltron before, but he, Lance, and Pidge were good people. They had to see that.

“That’s um… That’s not all.” He and Pidge turned around when Lance spoke. Honestly, he had almost forgotten his friend was still there, which was weird, because Lance was usually never this quiet. But now that he thought about it, Lance had been subdued since the fight yesterday, and that fact that Hunk was too preoccupied to notice that his friend was upset caused a wave of guilt to rumble within him.

Lance worried his lip. “I think I know how Aldus lured the Red Lion here in the first place.”

He could feel Pidge enter hyper-alert-conspiracy mode beside him. “Really? How?”

“When I was still stuck on the ground, I fought some of them…” Lance paused, collecting his words, and Hunk knew that this was no light matter; this bothered Lance deeply. “It was a rescue mission. The Alteans had some Galra held in the inside—I saw them coming out when I was trying to get to the Blue Lion.” Lance clenched his fist, jaw tight, as he vividly saw the scene replay in his mind.

Hunk felt…numb.

In a purely strategic way, it made sense, but it was just so… _wrong._ It made Hunk feel sick, deep down, to know a sliver of the truth.

Galran paladins, questionable Altean tactics, secrets and cover-ups…

Just what kind of war were they fighting?

—o0o—

“You…wanted to see me?”

Shiro stepped into the room slowly, vividly aware of his outsider status despite having been summoned to this exact spot. Sendak hadn’t even been sure why Shiro was needed, which just added to Shiro’s confoundment.

Why did Chief Zarkon want to speak to him—just him, not the Table? In the den of the Black Lion, no less.

The Black Lion’s presence was unmistakable and thoroughly distracting, causing his nerves to thrum even more. He felt so…small…in her presence, like he was approaching the Queen without an invitation. Yet, she wasn’t foreboding to him; in fact, there was something that drew Shiro to stare at her, some fascination, that hadn’t even been that strong when he laid eyes on the Red Lion for the first time.

“Yes, I did.”

Shiro startled slightly as Zarkon suddenly spoke, having been distracted by the giant lioness. He folded his arms behind him and tried to shift into an appropriate position. “Is there something you need me to do, sir?”

The Chief probably just wanted him to lead a particular mission, and thought to inform him himself. It wasn’t unimaginable, certainly. And as for the location, well… It was a well-known fact that Zarkon spent most of his time with the Black Lion—doing what, no one was explicitly certain. It was either here, or… Out of the two common options, the hangar was still more suitable for a meeting.

Zarkon regarded him with an intense yet non-intrusive expression, and knowing himself to be scrutinized, Shiro tried not to squirm under the unnaturally bright golden gaze, matching the lioness’ above him. “In a way,” he answered cryptically.

He turned away from Shiro abruptly, and faced the Black Lion; Shiro couldn’t help but follow his gaze. “I’m sure you are well aware of my…unfortunate physical state?”

Shiro could only hum in acknowledgement, because what could you say to that? Yes, Zarkon’s body was not in the shape it once had been, according to legend, but that didn’t make him any less respectable. Perhaps it made him more so.

Zarkon chuckled lowly, apparently amused in his response. “The Black Lion and I have known each other for millennia, but I can no longer fly with her. I am in no condition.”

“But… sir? Yesterday… You piloted the Black Lion just fine,” Shiro responded slowly, confused. And Zarkon flying in with the Black Lion had truly been a sight to behold; if Keith in the Red Lion was a wonder, then Chief Zarkon in the Black Lion was nothing short of magnificent and awe-inspiring.

“And that is nothing I can repeat anytime soon, I can assure you,” Zarkon replied gravely. “But Voltron has been awakened—the Black Lion’s presence is needed, perhaps more so now than ever before.”

He felt like he was imposing, somehow, to be discussing this with the Chief. Why not tell this to Sendak, his second, or even Keith? They were more involved in this than he was. Shiro was just a soldier, doing what he could for the cause—to help. “Why are you telling me this?”

Zarkon turned back to look him in the eye, expression somber and deadly serious. “Because, Lieutenant, you are the next Black Paladin.”

Shiro’s heart might’ve skipped a beat, and he was pretty sure he did not properly hear the words that Zarkon spoke, because _that_ sounded absurd. “I don’t understand.”

He placed a large hand on Shiro’s shoulder, and he found the sudden touch disconcerting. “The Black Lion chose you because you are an inspiring leader on the field, a firm and just hand, and there’s a compassion in you. This is your destiny, Shirogane. My time has left me, but Voltron will never leave— _you_ must lead it.”

Shiro was floored, driven to silence in his confoundment. This…this wasn’t happening. Shiro wasn’t anything special, or extraordinary—he wasn’t some legendary hero to be looked up to. He was a man, broken by circumstance, just trying to make the best of his situation. What Zarkon—what the _Black Lion_ —saw in him was beyond comprehension.

But he could tell that they were deadly serious. Yes, _they._ Because deep in his gut, in some ethereal part of himself he couldn’t identify, Shiro could feel her: powerful, wise, ancient—free, golden, beautiful. Accepting.

This wasn’t about him; this wasn’t about his insecurities, his short-comings. This was about something…bigger.

They wanted _him_ —needed him, for some reason—and who was he to say no?

“What do you want me to do?”

Zarkon clapped his back once, and headed towards the door. “Meet here tomorrow. We start in the morning.”

The Chief left him alone in the hangar, and the Black Lion hovered over Shiro, a foreign and sturdy presence that somehow was welcoming and comforting all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, trying to make up Galran words and names: ¯\\(°_o)/¯
> 
> I tried. 
> 
> Until next time, my lovelies. (And the next chapter won't be this depressing I swear.)


	9. Enter the Black Paladin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zarkon preps Shiro to take his mantle as the Black Paladin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeeeey guys. Sorry it's been a while. I have just but a few excuses: 1. FINALS. ('nuff said there) 2. This chapter was an absolute BUTT. I tried really hard to get the feel of it right, and I ended up splitting the chapter so I could a) get stuff out to you faster, and b) get a grip on what I'm doing. So if it's not much...sorry. It'll pick up soon...ish. And 3. I, uh, got distracted... As y'all might've noticed, I have another multi-chap fic going called _Tales of Valor_ and it also has my attention now. (If anybody is a Supergirl or Legion of Super-Heroes fan... *nudge nudge*) 
> 
> But no worries! I certainly can't forget this story! It's very close to my heart, just as Voltron in general is. If all goes well, the next chapter should be up by Christmas. (Yay!) 
> 
> So have a Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukkah and just a wonderful Holiday season in general. :)

_****"You spoke my language_  
_And touched my limbs_  
_It wasn't difficult_  
_To pull me from myself again_  
_And in our travels_  
_We found our roads_  
_You held it like a mirror, showing me the life I chose."_

— Sea Wolf, "Dear Fellow Traveler"

* * *

 

“Again.”

Shiro grunted, levering himself off the ground to return to his feet as the drone reset itself. This was starting to get old; he knew that Zarkon knew he could fight—with real weapons. The staff in his hands was, well, _useless._

“Lead with your left hand this time.”

And then there were the arm switches.

Shiro wasn’t one to question the Chief, but, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t _completely questioning this._ When Zarkon had told him that he was going to train him for the mantle of paladin, he somehow didn’t expect to go through a dozen or so basic training drills.

He switched the bo staff to his left hand with ease, spun it into position, and jabbed it into the training drone’s torso as he swept his leg underneath its legs; it hardly had the time for its own advance. Switching dominant hands was no difficulty. He could always fight well with either leading side, back at the Galaxy Garrison, but it was especially when he lost his arm that Shiro became ambidextrous.

The drone swiveled its leg towards Shiro, but he casually ducked and swung the staff at the back of its neck for the concussive blow that would signal for the drone to shut down. As always, he was well aware of the intent golden stares focused on his actions.

“With all due respect, sir, I fail to understand the point of this,” Shiro spoke finally, turning to face the Chief and the lioness that loomed behind him. “This is the same model we test new recruits to the Blade on.” They certainly weren’t anything sophisticated. They were repurposed from the model of old Galra sentries, meant to give new fighters something to teeth on. The drones were only rarely used as sentries in present times, because there simply weren’t the resources to waste on them; everything they had was used on the people.

Zarkon watched him impassively for a moment longer, before dipping his chin slightly. “Very well. I have seen enough.” He reached for his belt, and drew his weapon. The black bayard slipped into his grip easily, and it morphed into a hammer. “Draw your weapon, Lieutenant.”

“Sir?” Shiro could only stare in alarm as the chief approached him, weapon at the ready.

“I am not fragile, if that is what you fear.” Zarkon lifted the hammer. “But I assure you, I am formidable.”

He swung the hammer, and Shiro had to quickly roll out of the way. He slid his blade from its sheath on instinct at the point, and brought it up to block the next blow.

Somehow, it was fighting the Chief when Shiro realized how invasive his fighting technique was. It had never been a concern during battle, and it was rarely present in his mind when he sparred with Keith or other members of the Blade. But fighting the Chief felt different—perhaps because he was important.

Zarkon clubbed him with the head of the hammer in his moment of indecision, and Shiro stumbled backwards. “Do not go soft on me,” he ordered. “Fight!”

Shiro swung his sword in compliance. It clanged dramatically, reverberating in his hands as it collided with Zarkon’s heavy weapon. But then Zarkon was moving, pushing forward and twisting his position so that the hammer head would come down on him. Pressed with the sudden need to _move,_ Shiro dropped the blade from its position and moved in with his right arm instead as the sword began to shift. It took a while, but the blade was collapsible, able to elongate itself into a polearm. It wasn’t the same as most of the Blade of Marmora weapons, but it was easier to make a custom weapon than it was to try to make the alloy respond to his biology without limiting the weapon’s use to his right arm.

However, it took too long for the weapon to morph, because Zarkon was upon him again—with a small blade, suddenly. The hammer had vanished in an instant. In his confoundment, Shiro struggled to change maneuvers, and ended up having to sacrifice his right arm’s mobility to block the blow.  Zarkon’s fist quickly followed, leaving Shiro to twist out of the way and let the long knife’s jab follow through, just missing him. He yanked his spear forward, pushing Zarkon back—or at least, attempted to. The Chief was faster than he appeared, and it was evident now that despite his condition and size, he could still be agile.

But Shiro was more so. He ducked underneath his own weapon and straightened his prosthetic, moving in for the final blow—metaphorically speaking, of course.

Suddenly, however, Zarkon’s hand was there—a shield blocking his formerly exposed abdomen—and he grasped Shiro’s wrist, yanking him upward and off his feet.

Before he could react, Shiro was on the ground, chest heaving. There was a flash of violet above him as Zarkon put away his weapon. “That’ll be all for today.”

—o0o—

Since then, every morning just before the traditional Wake, Shiro sparred with the Chief. He wasn’t precisely sure what it benefitted specifically to the role of paladin, but fighting was what Shiro knew, so he didn’t complain. Zarkon, however, knew it better.

Zarkon’s take-downs took about the same measure of time, despite the spars growing in rigor; it only proved that at first, he had gone easy on Shiro.

Shiro grunted as his back hit the ground, but he rolled backwards onto his feet. No, he could last longer this time. He lunged, underneath Zarkon’s downward swing of his scythe; his sword was at his left side, blade turned to shield himself, as Zarkon’s bola knife came crashing towards him; but Shiro’s hand was already speeding upwards towards the throat. His fingers stopped, threatening with sparks, as Zarkon’s knife made it to the back of his neck.

They stood there, frozen in their stalemate, as only their breath was heard in the chamber. Shiro lowered his hand first, slowly, and the bayard weapon dissipated behind him.

“Very well,” the Chief commended, a ghost of something pleasurable on his face. “You anticipated my movement well.”

Shiro blinked at the praise. This might have been the most Zarkon had spoken to him in this past week combined. “Your attacks change, but your style started to become recognizable after a few movements,” he responded in explanation, not knowing what else to say. The bayard’s apparent versatility made Zarkon a hard case study, but after having gone at this for the past few spicolian movements, Shiro learned.

He had survived this long—lived, even—by being a fast learner, and Shiro wasn’t prepared to ease up on that.

Zarkon studied him in return, with a stoic severity, leaving Shiro to meet his yellow eyes and try not to be unnerved. Knowing that he was watched unnerved him more in present days than it had in the past, back when times were simpler and he was only human, but Shiro tried not to squirm underneath the judgement he was currently subjected to, because it _wasn’t like that._

The Chief broke his fixed stance first, breaking the tension. Suddenly, he was extended his hand towards Shiro’s left arm, bayard proffered at the end of it. “Take it, paladin. It is yours now.”

The bayard was huge, meant for Zarkon’s large Galran fist, and it felt as foreign as the words that had left Zarkon’s mouth. _Paladin._ He had only ever been a soldier or a prisoner before, and the new term of identification was a stranger—even if he had been forewarned.

However, as soon as the bayard left Zarkon’s hand and was fully composed in Shiro’s grip, it shrunk down to size, molding around his hand like a glove only meant for him. He stared at the white and black device for a moment, bemused, before it pulsated beneath him—a cool and familiar presence, despite its novelty—and elongated into a sleek polearm, with a curved blade on the end. A naginata, to be a precise.

Shiro spun the naginata experimentally. The bayard’s weight grew as it took form, proving itself a superior technology to even what the Galra had. However, all things considered, it felt light—an easy one-handed weapon should it ever need to be. It wasn’t one of the ones that Zarkon used, but somehow, Shiro expected that.

“How does it change form?” he asked, as he continued to familiarize himself with the weapon, feigning strikes and performing near forgotten drills from old classes.

“It is a matter of concentration: you will your weapon away, and you will it forward. As for different forms, that will come in time, as your quintessence aligns with the Black Lion’s. The weapon you have summoned is representative of you, and your primary fighting style.” Zarkon circled Shiro briefly, studying his bayard. “I have never seen a weapon quite like this, though it is similar to the spears we have. The blade is quite unique.”

Shiro paused, thrown off by the underlying question in his words. “It’s a naginata. It’s…from my homeland.” He hadn’t been to Japan since he was a kid, but it was still every bit a part of him. The weapon itself, he wasn’t entirely familiar with, but he knew enough; used once by the samurais of old, and adapted in modern arts as an instrument of control.

But there was something else bothering him. He knew that what the bayard chose became the weapon its paladin was supposedly most adept at—Keith was a prime example—but why this for him? He used a polearm in addition to his blade, yes, but he never considered it his primary weapon. That had always been… He clenched his right fist, only feeling phantom fingers. _Always_ , being a relative term, of course.

“But…” Shiro felt the question hesitate, but he pushed it through anywhere. He was here to learn, wasn’t he? “I’m a close-range fighter. Naginatas are mid-range weapons. So why choose it?”

“I was under the impression you _did_ use a mid-range. Is your chosen Marmora weapon not similar?” Zarkon asked instead, brow raised slightly.

He shouldn’t have brought it up. “It is,” Shiro relented. “But I never considered…”

Zarkon stared a moment more, pensive, before he sighed. “This is the bayard’s primary form—the one that comes easiest. It is every bit a part of you—and what the Black Lion believes you need. Perhaps you are a close-range fighter, but she has given you extra distance as well. I trust that it will serve you well.”

—o0o—

Nervousness settled into the pit of his belly like a looming predator. This felt wrong—and right—and he didn’t know what to make of it. And, cowardly as it sounded even to his own thoughts, the uncertainty alone made Shiro want to turn tail and run.

The Black Lion’s mouth unfolded into a ramp, right at his feet. Zarkon stood to the side, silent and passive; he didn’t need to speak, because the lion’s actions spoke for herself. She wanted him to come. _He_ wanted to come.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t still somehow terrified.

There was so much that could go wrong; so many things he could do wrong, so many things he could _be_ wrong. He…He was a mess. It was one of the things Shiro tried to avoid—to forget—all the time, but there was no denying that something inside him was…broken.

Certain things still sent him somewhere else, still sent phantom pains through his nerves. There were ticks that he had accrued, crutches that he leaned on. It wasn’t healthy, and Shiro knew that.

But that couldn’t stop him. He hadn’t let him stop him before, on the field and under the cowl. A swell of determination juxtaposed the anxiousness that swarmed him as he walked up the ramp to the Black Lion. Shiro raised his head, shoulders squared, and entered the cockpit.

It was vast, bathed in violet light that wasn’t quite real. Design-wise, it might’ve been exactly the same as the Red Lion’s cockpit, but the Black Lion’s felt bigger—weightier. Powerful, in a meaningful way. Maybe that was because the cockpit was formerly the seat of Chief Zarkon, maybe it was because the Black Lion was the head of Voltron; maybe it was both. Nevertheless, Shiro knew—somehow, instinctively—the power and the responsibility that came with it that now rested underneath his palms.

The dash lit up as the seat slid forward, and screens flickered to life with the mighty roar of a lion. Navigation readouts, GPS, shields, weapons… the windows kept coming, quickly yet steadily. _I’ll show you,_ she seemed to say. Or was that Zarkon? The impressions in his mind were incomprehensible from each other; he felt them both, as if they were really just one being that showed itself to him.

Four more screens appeared at the edge of the display, catching his attention. Three were fuzzy and unclear, but the first of them was unmistakable: the Red Lion. The Black Lion had tabs on all the lions of Voltron, present or no.

The entire cockpit seemed to thrum beneath him with life, between the cool lights and flitting screens. Shiro felt every hum, every breath, every heartbeat; it all stirred beneath him—within him—and even without lifting off of the ground, Shiro could _feel_ the rush of air and the frosty touch of space, just as the Black Lion remembered, all in anxious anticipation. 

 _“She wants to fly,”_ Zarkon prodded through the comm Shiro forgot, momentarily, that he had. _“Go.”_

And Shiro went. With barely a thought, the Black Lion rocketed forward into the depths of space, soaring through the space pocket like it was the open zone above the clouds.

Shiro was well acquainted with the emptiness of space, and with flying through it. But flying in the Black Lion was…different. He was closer to the vastness of the stars, despite being in a larger vessel. It was almost as though he could _feel_ the openness, the space, like a breath to the lungs after being suffocated.

It was amazing.

He knew now precisely what Keith meant when he said that it was impossible to explain the sheer _rush_ of flying a Lion of Voltron, that it couldn’t be put into words. It wasn’t like simply _piloting_ something, because Shiro knew what that was like. No, it almost felt like…riding a horse, like he had when he was younger. His hands were guide, instinctively bending the unusual controls the direction he wanted to go, with the occasional tip from Zarkon, who somehow knew exactly what he was doing.

Keith was right: flying with the Black Lion couldn’t be put into words without doing it injustice. But, if Shiro had to try to describe the feeling that overtook him, he could narrow it down to one word.

_Freedom._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was so weird actually writing a _real_ paladin training sequence, because, well, they never really got that in the show. Just general this-is-how-to-fight-and-vaguely-fly-a-lion-and-form-Voltron stuff. Which is great and all, but this is a little more...specialized...and if I failed, I'm sorry. Feel free to comment and review! 
> 
> Also I spent, like, _hours_ trying to determine Shiro's bayard, so... Hopefully it's okay?? 
> 
> Whelp, until next time!


	10. The Sidelines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Shiro trains with Zarkon, Keith spends his time doing...stuff. (Yes, it's as exciting as it sounds. Which is to say, not at all.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhhhh.... I'm sorry? I'm really, really, _really_ sorry! This chapter should have been finished and up sooner, it really should have; I promised y'all as much.
> 
> I have excuses though! For one thing, over break, I caught new-fandom disease. (I know, I _know_.) I watched/read all of Attack on Titan. All of it. It's really good. (*cough there's a Voltron-style AOT AU I'm starting if you care cough*) So I may have gotten carried away. And then come January, I actually caught the flu. It sucked. (I'm fine now though.) And life, yadda yadda, I'm back!
> 
> Enjoy the chapter!

"The worst time to feel alone is when you're in a crowd."

— Anthony Horowitz

* * *

 

It was the first time they had been _allowed_ to go outside the space pocket in nearly a phoeb, and it was _great_.

Not that busting up a stray asteroid was the epitome of a good time, but the point was, Keith could fly with Red _outside_ the space pocket without having to sneak out. And he got to unleash pent-up frustration on rocks. A win, all-in-all.

He twisted Red mid-air and released a torrent of fire to break up a large chunk that drifted to his right; the flame flashed through the vacuum in an instant, and the rock exploded into smaller, harmless chunks. Was it extra? Maybe. But Keith and Red enjoyed it immensely.

A flash of black and white zoomed past him, a streak of violet cutting through the space beside him. _“On your left.”_

Keith snorted. “Real mature.”

Shiro laughed through the comm. line. _“You only did it to me, like,_ dozens _of times when I was in a flyer,”_ he teased.

Keith rolled his eyes, enjoying the fact that Shiro could see his expression through the lions’ communication channel. This way, Keith was _positive_ Shiro knew every last ounce of irritation he had in him. “Well, sometimes, you fly so _slow._ ”

The Black Lion loomed beside him, violet jaw-blade dissipating from her mouth. Compared to her, the Red Lion seemed so small—which was saying something, since she was bigger than the majority of the Galra fighters. _“Just because you_ can _go full throttle sometimes, it doesn’t mean you_ should, _”_ Shiro chided teasingly.

Smirking to himself, Keith gripped Red’s controls and shoved them downwards. She took off underneath him, her eagerness to comply palpable, and they zoomed underneath the asteroids—leaving the Black Lion in their space dust—and torched an entire line of asteroids from below. “It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t either.”

Shiro’s dry exasperation was obvious. _“No wonder they kicked you out.”_

Keith grunted. He just _had_ to bring that up, did he? Not long after recovering Shiro, Keith had made the mistake of finally giving into his questionings, and admitting that he had been kicked out of the Garrison for sucker-punching a superior officer not long after Shiro went missing. Shiro understood, of course, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t give him grief for it. “That wasn’t why, and you know it,” he bristled. Shiro hummed in acknowledgement, before maneuvering the Black Lion into a better position and firing their cannons. He hadn’t been piloting the Black Lion for long—in fact, this was Shiro’s first time outside the pocket with her—and the stiffness was noticeable. But Shiro was the best pilot Keith knew, so he was sure that it was only a matter of time before he grew accustomed to flying with a lion of Voltron.

Honestly, Keith had never given much thought to the other pilots of Voltron before. He knew that there were five lions, and he knew that Voltron wouldn’t be complete until they were all present. But somehow, that never felt like it pertained to Keith personally—it had always been a grander problem, a big uncertainty and duty that loomed far ahead. It was Red’s burden, to be reunited with the other lions; the only reunion Keith had cared about was finding Shiro, and he did that.

And yet, he was suddenly struck with how _right_ it felt, to fly side-by-side—lion and lion—with Shiro. There was no one else Keith could imagine piloting Voltron with.

 _“I think that settles it,”_ Shiro declared. The asteroid was all broken up and scattered now, no longer threatening to breach the space pocket and crush them. _“Time to head in. Good job out there Keith.”_

“Yeah.” Keith shouldn’t have felt disappointed. He should have been able to shoot back some better affirmation to Shiro’s enthusiasm, or some snark that _he_ was the newbie here and not Keith, but he found himself only aware of the retreating form of the Black Lion, and his own inevitable return to the space pocket. Alone.

Yes, Keith was insanely grateful that Shiro somehow became a pilot of Voltron alongside of him, but he was aware that that reality was not all it should have been.

Shiro was spending more time elsewhere nowadays, training under Zarkon himself. He didn’t quite understand the effort they put into this, but Keith wasn’t one to judge. Keith himself had received some advice and training after he was chosen by the Red Lion, but nothing to the extent that Shiro was undergoing; but neither was Keith the Black Paladin. He knew that of all of the mantles, it was the heaviest. Shiro sometimes told him of some of the things he had experienced in his training, but Keith could only pretend to be able to comprehend half of it. While the bond he shared with Red was instinctual, Black’s bond required far more, it would seem. Keith didn’t envy him, no. There was just a part of him that wished for things to be a little different.

He was simply bored out of his mind. With Zarkon’s command to lay low, there was nothing to do. The Blade had a few missions, but all of them involved some high level of stealth. (Shiro had once, kindly, expressed to him that stealth was not his forte. Unfortunately, Keith was inclined to agree.) The one thing that had kept Keith from going stir-crazy had been Shiro, but now he was off, occupied with better things. Sure, he could always spar with some of the Blades or the recruits, but that was only so satisfying.

Slowly, he returned Red to her hangar. Shiro was probably in Black’s with Zarkon right now, so Keith peeled off and headed deeper into the heart of the base, without any specific destination in mind.

Restlessness had become a general atmosphere, affecting more than just Keith. Soldiers milled about the halls without assignment; trainees horsed about, poking their noses into trouble; some commanders had quietly left to go to their home settlements and to deal with affairs there. Not many people _could_ leave, however, because “mass movement would be highly conspicuous,” apparently. They were stuck in a limbo ever since their direct confrontation with Alfor’s forces, and that only caused the general anxiety to be worse.

Keith walked past a couple of Blades playing chess (Shiro taught them the game, and it spread like an epidemic soon after; that was a weird week) and ended up wandering to a set of open tables in the courtyard, electing to sit underneath the synthetic sky. Maybe he should take the opportunity to learn Altean some more. Even though translators were quite common, some Altean facilities had taken measures to block their use, therefore making actually _learning_ the language beneficial, not that Keith much had the patience for it. But the training halls were rather crowded, and Keith wanted to do _something_ productive.

He turned on the data-pad with a silent groan and set to work. Altean had a larger alphabet than Galran—larger than English, even—despite being a phonetic language, so it was easy to lose track of them. At least it shared some similarities with Galran. (Of course, thanks to translators and a large history of communication, many languages shared terminologies that had become globalized.) Point was, Keith could tell if they were cursing or talking about the time, and maybe some cuisine, but he had no idea how to properly introduce himself in Altean. Which was to say, he didn’t know quite enough to bullshit his way through it like Shiro did. (Shiro had to learn English as a kid when his family moved from Japan: other languages didn’t tend to be as difficult as that.)

“… _Inkein de…jau—”_ No, wait, that wasn’t right. _I am a soldier._ Simple. Useful. Hard to say… “ _Inkein de joe—_ Quiznak!”

“Well that’s a rather bold statement,” somebody drawled from behind him.

Startled by the newcomer, Keith nearly dropped the tablet as he whipped around to face him. Seeing who it was there was even more surprising.

Lotor stood casually at the edge of the courtyard, looking rather amused. Of all the people who visited this base, the son of the chief was not a frequent. In fact, Keith was sure that Lotor did his best to avoid them, preferring to raid Altean ships with his crew for the fun of it. It wasn’t like him to drop in for a house call.

“Lotor. What are you doing here?” Keith blurted.

He merely chuckled. “You must be the Red Paladin,” Lotor surmised instead. A quick look down, and Keith remembered that he was still wearing his armor from his flight with Red.

“Yeah.” He didn’t know quite how to respond to that, so Keith just straightened and met Lotor’s eye. The other half-breed sat down nonchalantly in front of him.

“I’m sure Alfor was pleased,” he said with bared teeth. He could tell that Lotor enjoyed the notion.

Keith snorted. “Pleased enough to double his efforts on killing us,” he replied dryly. He didn’t know why they were talking about this, and he still didn’t know why Lotor showed up. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he wanted something from them. From what Keith had heard of him, he was willing to bet it was the latter.

Lotor watched him carefully, violet eyes astute. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Because it kind of _is._ ”

Lotor huffed. “So serious,” he intoned. “Just like my father…”

“Is there something you want to say,” Keith growled, growing defensive. He didn’t know how he got stuck in this conversation, and at the rate this was going, Keith was tempted to just leave. Lotor didn’t have the right to walk in here and start questioning everything they did.

“What I’m _saying_ ,” Lotor hissed, though somewhat softer than his previous haughty tone, “is that if Alfor is paying us more mind, then that mean he _fears_ us. And _that_ , my friend, means we’re doing something right.”

“Huh.” Keith hadn’t thought about it that way before. Any victory they could take over Alfor was a good one, even if it was just making him quake in his boots. “You have a point.”

Lotor smiled like he knew that he was right all along; Keith felt his irritation return a little. “What do you even want, anyways?” he asked bluntly, realizing that his first question had been swatted aside by Lotor’s antics.

The lavender skinned hybrid waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, I want nothing here,” he replied lightly, though Keith couldn’t help but feel it was also meant to be insulting. Lotor grimaced to himself. “My father summoned me,” he explained. “He made it sound _urgent,_ but I see you are productive as ever.”

Keith bristled. As irritated as he was with the set-up, he felt the need to defend his regiment. “It’s too risky to be too active right after our confrontation at the Altean outpost,” he parroted, not sounding as convicted as he wanted to.

Lotor hummed noncommittedly. “I see…” was all he said, before clearing his throat. “Say, where is my father anyway?”

“Probably with Shiro,” Keith mumbled, shrugging. They were in the Black Lion’s hangar more often than not.

Zarkon’s son raised a brow, portraying interest—or maybe confusion. “Shiro?” he repeated blandly. “I’m afraid I don’t know who that is.”

“The lieutenant of the Blade of Marmora,” he answered stiffly, emphasizing the title. He already felt himself growing defensive.

“Ah.” Recognition sparked in his eye. “The human.”

“That doesn’t make him any less capable,” Keith growled.

Lotor held up his hands placatingly. “I said nothing of the sort.” It was still entirely within the realm of possibility that he was thinking it, however. Many people did; Keith heard their mutters when they thought he couldn’t. Lotor tapped the table once, twice. “And why is my father occupied with him, again? I was under the impression that your friend would associate more with Captain Kolivan than the Chief.”

Keith fiddled with the settings of his tablet, shutting it off. “He’s training Shiro to be the next Black Paladin.”

“Oh.” Lotor was silent for a while after that. He could imagine what the son of Zarkon might be thinking, because Keith knew the contention that already existed. Some thought it strange that the ‘weapon’ might be passed to someone not of the Galra race; they didn’t understand that Voltron didn’t care about _what_ you were, only _who._

They sat like that for a while longer, in amicable silence. They were each alone. Keith, unwilling to bother with anyone else; Lotor, in line for his own father’s attention.

It was a strange comradery they stumbled upon. Keith found that he didn’t mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I make empty promises, but I swear, I'll be spiffy with this next chapter. And your reviews do help to inspire me! (Shout out to Hippo_Keith who made me get off my butt and finish this chapter!)
> 
> See you next time!


	11. From Father to Son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, sorry for taking so long... (Again.) Hopefully updates will be better this summer, because I'm officially on break until the end of August! Yay!

"Few sons are like their fathers—many are worse, few better."

— Homer

* * *

“I cannot tolerate incompetence among my generals, son or no.”

“Father, I can explain—”

“Do not waste your breath on me unless there is sense to your words. I am a busy man.”

“I never intended to win that battle. I knew that the chance of doing so was slim.”

Alfor paused in his reproach and considered his son’s vehement justification. It wasn’t unheard of—or even rare—that his generals should attempt to sway him with their excuses, but Alfor recognized confidence in Aldus’ words. As his father, it was Alfor’s great hope that his children should not only learn but to master the art of war and peace, and to do so it would require an intimate relationship with cunning and persistence not often achieved by the narrow-minded. Aldus, rash though he could be, portrayed nothing but stubborn yet crafty resilience in that moment. It was enough to make Alfor proud.

“Continue,” he bade, turning to give his son his utmost attention.

Aldus squared his shoulders. “I suspected that the chances of capturing a lion of Voltron would be slim, although I was fully prepared to do so. However, I scattered my men on purpose.” There was a sort of bubbling excitement in his words as Aldus suddenly broke his stance to summon a holo-map, a small smirk rising on his lip. “I sent some stealth pods to scour the area, and, upon locking onto the incoming quintessence signature of the Red Lion, we were able to follow it discreetly upon the Galra’s retreat.”

Alfor considered the words carefully, beholding the faint trail of coordinates painstakingly pinpointed on the map. Its implication surprised him. “You don’t mean—”

“Yes, father,” Aldus replied triumphantly. “I have located the Galra’s core base.”

If Aldus was not mistaken in his achievement, then it was a feat unparalleled. The hive from which the Galra maintained themselves had remained scarce for many centuries, carefully hidden where even Alfor could not locate it. He had been impressed with Zarkon’s cleverness, though inconvenienced. He would have liked to eliminate Zarkon and the Galra’s incessant need to meddle in his accomplishments long ago, since his old friend had ceased to see reason and betrayed him.

It was a subject long since passed, though no less hurtful. In recent times, Alfor had been able to largely ignore the continued thorn that was Zarkon in favor of higher pursuits, aided in the fact that Zarkon himself grew less pugnacious in his efforts to further thwart him. It had been reward-eager captains and even his own son, Aldus, who most actively sought to avenge Altea’s dignity by dealing with the one force most adamant in seeing the universe kept from progress. Alfor had been more than willing to let them handle the Galra as they saw fit, and it kept the sting of betrayal from actively afflicting him.

However, it proved that Zarkon had one last insult to his injury: the Red Lion.

After keeping her from him for all these centuries, he had finally managed to force another paladin upon her, just so that he could parade them around for the universe to see. Alfor often missed the comradery and ease of the Red Lion, and the might she beheld and the fear she could instill. It was hard to carry on without his fine creation, but not impossible. Powerful though it was, the universe could still thrive without Voltron, so long as they had quintessence at their disposal. Alchemy was ever-growing, and just as he had uncovered Voltron all those years ago, Alfor had maintained the hope that he and the druids—an elite core of alchemists dedicated to the art—could find new greatness.

They never quite succeeded. It was nagging affliction, to know that Voltron would forever be his greatest creation, yet aggravatingly difficult to uncover. His former comrades had hidden it well.

He had had to put aside his obsession with retrieving it on hold in favor of Altea and her rising empire, much to his dismay, but it had proved an apt choice when fate rewarded him with three lions at his doorstep. However, that was sullied by the Red Lion’s appearance with another paladin. Alfor would not lose his lion to some Galra scum that thought he could play with something far greater than he could ever be.

It was this burning bitterness that was molded into fiery vindictiveness at the newfound knowledge that he would be able to make the next move.

Alfor awarding his son with a congratulatory clap on the back. “You did well, son.” Zarkon’s cowardly tactics were over, now. “You did well.”

—o0o—

“Lieutenant! Where’s the Chief?”

Shiro was nearly startled out of his seat by Sendak’s loud and sudden entry. He swung around from his desk, where he was catching up on some Blade reports, in order to face the obviously harried commander. “I—I don’t know,” he shot back. “I’ve been in here all day.”

It was a wonder Sendak even asked him in the first place. He must be desperate to find Zarkon if he was willing to seek out Shiro. Now, Shiro didn’t pretend to understand the relationship he and Sendak possessed, but he knew it was a strained one; he always assumed it had something to do with the fact that he was a human, but honestly, it might have been a clash of personality at the root. Sendak was a hard-edged commander, and Shiro was “more flexible than he should be,” apparently. But that was beside the point.

Sendak growled irritably. “ _Now_ you don’t know…” he grumbled.

He didn’t have a response for Sendak’s irritation, because Shiro could surmise the source. Ever since he began his training to fulfill the mantle of Black Paladin, he had been spending more time with Zarkon, and based on the GRC’s need to hang onto Zarkon’s every word, he could imagine that there would be some contention among the commanders.

Plus, Keith mentioned as much when Shiro was finally able to sit down with him for a meal that was longer than a few minutes.

“Should I pass on a message?” Shiro sighed, eager to alleviate the growing tension in the room. Anything to get Sendak to leave and not be _completely_ pissed at him.

Sendak grunted. “Just tell him that there are matters needing to be attended to in the command room,” he replied tersely, before leaving as quickly as he came.

“Very specific, Sendak, I’ll tell him just that…” he grumbled underneath his breath, sorting the reports into a neat stack. There was _always_ a ‘matter to attend to’ in the GRC, so Shiro wasn’t surprised at the vague reply. They faced an assortment of problems, ranging from discovered colonies to food shortages, and it seemed that no one was bothered to specify anymore. Shiro understood, of course, but he couldn’t help but to feel as if the Galra’s reliance on the chain of command was…dangerous. 

Shiro shoved himself away from his desk. He might as well go seek the chief out, just so he could relieve the base of the panic that would arise if Zarkon remained unfindable for too long. In reality, there was really only one place that he could be if he wasn’t at the command center or in Black’s hangar.

It was in the back of the base, closer to the chief’s quarters than anything else. Nobody went back there because there was no need. It might have been an old hangar space, back in the day, but Shiro couldn’t be sure. Regardless, it was something entirely different now.

The entrance way was dark and cold, lit only by violet lights, tinged with a darker blue. Encryptions in a small, orange font lined the walls, just barely fluorescent enough to speak the names of those passed. Shiro moved silently—reverently—through the hall of the dead. At the end was a circular room, lit now in a faint yet rich gold. There was only one name here, inscribed on a white stone with a careful blue pen, written in two languages. As Shiro expected, Zarkon kneeled before it, murmuring to the words he had written there a few centuries ago.

_Honerva, my beloved._

_May your star shine brightly and guide us home._

“Zarkon,” he started, careful not to disturb the chief. However, it was clear that he already knew that Shiro had approached him. “Sendak is looking for you.”

The chief sighed heavily. “Isn’t he always?”

“You’re right about that…” Shiro couldn’t help but to mutter. Though now he felt bad about disturbing Zarkon at his wife’s grave. “I’m sorry I bothered you. He was really adamant.”

“I would imagine that it’s because my son’s presence is testing his patience.”

Right. Lotor. He had arrived yesterday, showing up suddenly and ambling about without clear purpose as to why he had showed up. It was unlike Lotor to come to the base at all, much less without reason. Shiro was in no place to judge, but he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to strain Zarkon’s and Lotor’s relationship, because from what little he had seen of the elusive ‘prince,’ he had no interest in spending any extended period of time with his father. Or have anything to do with the GRC, for that matter. Not that he didn’t _do_ anything… Lotor was very active with his band of pirates or whatever they were, terrorizing the Alteans and anybody who looked like they sided with them. Perhaps not the most productive, but it wasn’t nothing. The point was, Lotor and Zarkon didn’t see eye-to-eye when it came to policy, which made this visit surprising, to say the least.

“Has Lotor said why he came here?” he asked, admittedly interested in the answer.

Zarkon stood slowly, his countenance grave. “I asked him to come here.”

Shiro felt his brow shoot upwards, and he eyed Zarkon with thinly veiled concern. There was something morose about him, more so than normal; it was in the set of his shoulders and settled in his voice, like some sort of resignation. He didn’t know whether it was because of where they were standing, or because of something else, but it was disconcerting to see Zarkon act this way regardless.

Nobody moved. Zarkon stood over his wife’s grave, and Shiro was left to watch him from the hall, wishing there was something he could do to alleviate the heaviness of the room. “Is there something wrong?”

Zarkon turned to face Shiro, offering him a small but kind smile. The Chief was an austere man, full of scars and secrets, but in time Shiro found he was no less… well, ‘human’ was the wrong term, considering the circumstance, but the observation was still valid. “You know my time is short, Shiro,” he sighed.

He didn’t need a reminder, but it was true that Shiro didn’t want to think of the ramifications. He _knew_ that the Black Lion kept Zarkon alive for ten thousand years, just as he knew that Zarkon felt that he was unable to pilot her any longer. It was two plus two, but the answer wasn’t easy. “I know,” he replied, heavy, knowing where the conversation was going.

Zarkon was dying.

“It draws near,” the chief continued, confirming what Shiro feared. “I asked my son to come here so that I may speak to him one last time. I… should’ve done it sooner…” He coughed once, and then again, his face contorted in a rare show of his regret.

“It’s okay,” Shiro found himself saying. “It’s not too late.”

Zarkon remained silent, casting his gaze towards Honerva’s grave for one last time. In the dim light, his frailty became painfully evident to Shiro. His chest ached at the realization that Zarkon’s time in this world was quickly coming to an end. It hurt to watch, because Shiro knew he was powerless. Worse yet was the knowledge that Shiro had only begun to truly get to know the man. He was the mentor that he had never had before. It seemed cruel that he should be taken away from them, but as much as he hated to admit it, he knew that Zarkon wanted this.

“I suppose not,” he replied, finally.

It was as if the passage of time had dunked itself underwater, moving about sluggishly but with no sense of uniformity. They walked slowly out of the memorial chamber, Shiro taking pains to keep pace with Zarkon as they stumbled along. However, it was as if the weight of death didn’t leave them, although they left the room. It floated above them, waiting. They didn’t make it far past it when Zarkon collapsed. Shiro carried him to the med bay without a word. Neither of them needed to say anything in that moment, because they didn’t have to.

—o0o—

It was a strange and a surreal feeling to die. Zarkon had only felt something like this once, when Alfor had attempted to kill him the first time. He should have been successful, too, if it weren’t for the presence of the Black Lion. Zarkon could never say that he wasn’t grateful to be saved, but it would be a lie to say that coming back to life wasn’t the hardest thing that he had ever done.

Death was a battle. The decline was as rapid as it was inevitable, but given the will, Zarkon knew first-hand that it was possible to claw one’s way out of its grasp. However, things were different now. His lifelines were gone, either faded before him or given away of his own volition. And that was fine. Ultimately, Zarkon was ready to go; he had done enough.

There was only one thing left to do.

“I don’t understand the meaning of this— Father?!” He heard his son before he saw him, bursting through the door and past Tryn in a harried manner hardly ever seen of him. There was confusion written on Lotor’s face, and Zarkon regretted—for a moment—not telling Lotor sooner that he was dying. He had been since he first stoked the bond between the Black Lion and Shiro. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Sit, son,” he managed. Perhaps it was the circumstance, but for once, Lotor obeyed him.

Shiro—who had not left his side since meeting him in Honerva’s chamber—stirred, moving as if to leave. Zarkon grasped the man by the wrist, stilling him; he hadn’t said all he wanted to say to his apprentice, either.

“I know… I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye…”

“No!” Lotor hissed at him, his gaze unstable. He always had had Honerva’s passion. “I cannot accept this. You—”

“Lotor.” He had to make him understand, before it was too late. Zarkon grasped his son’s hand, holding him close. “Lotor, I’m sorry.”

“W-what?”

“I’m sorry, that I didn’t always listen. And I’m sorry that you had to be the son of a chief—that I had to put our people before you, time and time again.” He hated that Lotor’s time with his mother was shorter than it should have been, and most of all, Zarkon hated that he didn’t give the boy the proper attention after Honerva’s death.

These were his regrets.

“Father, I—” The quick-witted boy—he received that from his mother, too—was nearly silenced. No. He wasn’t a boy anymore. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m proud of you, Lotor. Remember that. Please.”

Zarkon smiled, knowing that he at least managed that before he passed. He could feel his limbs shaking with fatigue, unaided by his _Jemisha’s_ quintessence.

His son faltered, eyes shining and voice quiet. No father wanted his son to witness his passing, but it was only natural. Lotor would understand in time, he was sure.

“I love you, son.”

Lotor fled the room, leaving behind only the wet stains on the side of Zarkon’s bed. Shiro stayed, frozen to his spot on his right. Zarkon gave his hand a squeeze—barely anything of consequence, however, because his grip failed him. “Take care of them,” he ordered. He knew he could trust Shiro to do what was right, both for the Galra and the universe. Zarkon took a small data pad from his pocket and pressed it into Shiro’s palm. He had said all he needed to in those documents. “All of them.”

Having said all that he could, Zarkon closed his eyes, so that he may join Honerva in the stars at long last.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: The Galran word "jemisha" which Zarkon adopts in reference in to the Black Lion is from a Sanskrit name, which translates roughly to "queen of darkness" or "queen of the night."
> 
> So yeah.
> 
> I'll be back later! Until then, I'll just let you stew on what I have done. Heheh.
> 
> Comment and review! That always motivates me to write and gives me feedback and stuff.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's that. Which side are you on? I promise Voltron will come together....eventually... Mwahaha. The Lions should have thought things through. (Or did they? Hmm...) 
> 
> Leave your comments and questions here! (They inspire me to write faster and boosts my pathetic, groveling confidence.)


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